ELI Expo Logistics International has delivered more than 10 tons of equipment worth more than ?2m ($3.4m) to the British Army in Tibet as part of its sponsorship of the army's Prince's Trust charity climb

of the west ridge of Mount Everest.
Best known for its exhibition and warehousing services to the duty free and travel retail industry, ELI is a lead sponsor of the endeavour, which requires major logistics handling.
ELI owner Brian Grossman told The Business: ‘The projects is called EWR 2006 climbing Everest West Ridge 2006. There are about 40 people and two teams. There is the main team and the development team. The development team is for the health of the people.
‘Our job was to arrange and collate all of the material in the UK, put it all together in barrels, pallets and packages. We collected it from various stores around the UK, collated it together at our warehouse and then we flew it from the UK with Qatar Airways via Doha to Katmandu.
‘We then worked with the British Gurkhas and they got the licences from the Nepalese Government and then we transferred it from Nepal to Tibet with the Chinese authorities. Each licence to climb Everest is $100,000 and if you summit then you have to pay an additional amount. ELI are a major sponsor and if you go to skynews.co.uk they have also got video footage of the effort.’
Grossman said the aim is to reach the summit by the end of June and if they do it will be the first time that any British climbers have conquered the West Ridge.
‘They have been training for this for three years and Leeds Met University have been taking care of their health and monitoring them. For the last month or so they have been sleeping with altitude masks in the UK to acclimatise their bodies.’
Grossman said that members of the duty free and travel retail industry can help the sponsorship by logging on to the www.armyoneverest.com web site where you can send a postcard from Everest to anywhere in the world at a cost of ?2.50 ($3.04).
‘We are very proud to be associated with this and we are the only company involved that doesn't already have contracts with the British military. You should log on and send that postcard and so should everybody else in the duty free world,’ he said enthusiastically.