Alex was working at Anglo American in Brisbane, handling shipping schedules and demurrage, when he and Conor Hagan co-founded Explorate in 2016. The two had met in a Brisbane warehouse where global trade still ran on fax and paper. His experience spans freight forwarding at UTi Worldwide and JAS, moving automotive and oil and gas cargo. His view is that every supply chain is different, and technology works best when it is built around people.

Conor spent 12+ years inside freight forwarding before founding Explorate. He handled airfreight export at DHL in Dublin, then seafreight at UTi and business development at DSV in Brisbane. Explorate does the forwarding itself and runs the software with it, giving importers live shipment visibility and cost transparency across their carriers.