It began with a bad day at an airport. More than 28 years later, we are a family-run shipping specialist next to Heathrow. This is how it happened — in our own words.
Every business starts somewhere. Ours started at a check-in desk in Phuket.
It was 1998 — the internet was just finding its feet, and the world was starting to move in new ways. Newly married and heading home, our founder was stung for a painful excess-baggage charge at Phuket airport. Standing there, paying far more than seemed fair simply to get his own belongings home, he had a thought that would not go away: there has to be a better way to move people’s things around the world.
That single frustrating moment — the kind almost every traveller has felt — became the reason Excess Luggage Co. exists. We were the customer first. We know the problem because we have lived it.
After that excess-baggage sting at Phuket, our founder set out to build a better way for people to send their belongings overseas — without the shock of an airline charge at the desk. Excess Luggage began in 1998 — the same year lastminute.com launched in London and the internet travel boom took hold. Amazon and eBay were barely three years old; Google was brand new. It was the very start of the online era, and we have been helping people move their belongings ever since.
The business was incorporated as Excess Luggage Ltd, taking its place as a proper limited company. We settled into our base near Heathrow — two miles from the runway, at the heart of the UK’s air-cargo world.
For several years we were trusted to deliver lost and delayed luggage on behalf of major international airlines — including American Airlines, Air India, Ethiopian Airlines and Japan Airlines, among others. Reuniting travellers with their belongings, on behalf of the airlines themselves, taught us the cargo side of Heathrow from the inside — knowledge that still benefits every customer we handle today.
From around 2010 we expanded into commercial cargo and sea freight for business clients — larger, more complex shipments alongside our personal-effects work. We continue to offer these services today, handling everything from a single suitcase to full commercial consignments.
Brexit changed the rules of shipping to Europe overnight, turning simple EU moves into full customs movements. We worked through every change — learning the new Transfer of Residence rules so our customers did not have to.
The pandemic threw global freight into chaos — grounded flights, shifting restrictions, disrupted routes. We adapted, kept shipments moving where we could, and kept being honest with customers about what was and was not possible.
More than 28 years on, we are still family-run, still next to Heathrow, and still answering the phone. Everything on this website — every destination guide, every piece of advice — is built on that quarter-century of real experience.
Technology has transformed almost everything about how the world moves since 1998. But the things that matter about how we work have stayed exactly the same:
We think that is why people who shipped with us as students come back to us years later as parents. It is the long view — the way a family business naturally thinks.
Excess Luggage was built by a family — and it is being carried on by one.
Our founder, Lak, started the business in 1998 with one belief: that people deserved a better, fairer way to move their belongings around the world. More than 28 years on, that belief is shared by the loyal, long-serving team who have helped build Excess Luggage into what it is — people who have been with us for years, who know our customers, and who care about getting every shipment right.
And the entrepreneurial spirit that started it all has carried into the next generation of the family. Lak’s two daughters are entrepreneurs in their own right — the founders of Wild Chai, a premium Ayurvedic chai and wellness brand featured in British Vogue and GQ and stocked in Selfridges. They built it from the very same family base on the Great West Road, near Heathrow. The same instinct that turned a bad day at Phuket into a business runs, it seems, in the family.
That is the hope behind everything here: that the business Lak started in 1998 will be carried on — by the loyal people who helped build it, and by a family that keeps finding better ways to do things. A legacy, in the truest sense.
We started because of one bad day at an airport. We have spent every year since making sure other people do not get caught out the way we were. And we intend to keep doing it — for the students, families and professionals moving abroad today, and for their children after them, carried forward by our team and our family for the next generation of shippers.
If you are moving belongings out of the UK, we have almost certainly done your route before. We would love to help with yours.
In 1998, after our founder was stung for excess baggage at Phuket airport and set out to build a better way to ship belongings overseas. We incorporated as Excess Luggage Ltd in 2001. That is more than 28 years of experience.
Yes. We are a family-run business, and have been from the start. The same people are accountable for your shipment year after year — not a call centre that changes every month.
Because shipping personal effects involves customs, documents and timing that can go wrong in ways a website cannot anticipate. Having handled these situations since 1998 — through the dot-com era, Brexit and COVID — we help you avoid the pitfalls before they happen.
MetEx House, 496a Great West Road, Hounslow TW5 0TE — two miles from Heathrow, in the heart of the UK’s air-cargo estate. A real family business at a real address, since 1998.
More than 28 years of experience, a family business, a real person on the phone, and your shipment personally managed from your UK door to its destination.
Request a quoteOr call us free on 0800 096 38 39