Trent Port Services
A global port consultancy with US$3 billion of equipment delivery behind it, stuck with a website that said none of it. We rebuilt the brand, content architecture and WordPress site from scratch.
Replaced a dated, broken website with a WordPress platform that finally matches the scale of the firm's track record (work in 47 countries, over US$200 million in port projects managed).
The Challenge
What we were solving
Trent Port Services is a Singapore-headquartered port consultancy and engineering firm, founded in June 2016 by industry veterans with more than a century of combined experience at operators like P&O Ports, Hutchison Port Holdings and DP World. The firm has managed over US$200 million in port projects across 47 countries, delivered more than US$3 billion of strategic port cranes and equipment, and led a European port to an industry-first ISO55000 Asset Management certification.
Almost none of that came across online. The existing website was old and partly broken, and Jon Arnup's team had a clear ambition for 2025: become the go-to port services company in Singapore, with a site that could support expansion well beyond it. Port operators buying due diligence, crane TPI programmes or automation strategy are cautious, technical buyers. A site that looked neglected undercut every conversation before it started.
Success meant a complete overhaul: a refreshed brand, a content structure that separated the consultancy and engineering arms cleanly, and trust signals (case studies, testimonials, leadership bios, the numbers above) placed where a sceptical prospect would look for them.
Our Approach
How we tackled it
Content architecture before design
We started with strategy and discovery, then drafted the content itself (homepage, about, engineering and consultancy pages, plus a repeatable case study template) before designing around it. The firm's two arms, Trent Consultancy and Trent Engineering, each got a dedicated section with its own service breakdown, from terminal master planning and acquisition due diligence to crane lifecycle assessments using 3D Finite Element Analysis modelling.
The case study template was a deliberate trade-off. Rather than launch with thin project pages, we built a structured format (overview, challenge, approach, measurable results, takeaways) the Trent team could fill as client approvals came through, so credibility content could grow without developer involvement.
Design for a technical, conservative buyer
The build itself was a clean, mobile-responsive WordPress site with strong photography and illustration, avoiding the generic stock-image look common in maritime services. We designed a purposeful user flow: homepage to company story, leadership team, service detail, then conversion-focused contact pathways. Proof points (47 countries across five continents, US$200 million in projects, US$3 billion in equipment delivered, the ISO55000 first) were surfaced as a statistics strip rather than buried in body copy.
The site launched in early 2025, with Chillybin handling post-launch QA, monitoring and ongoing WordPress support.
The Solution
What we delivered
The firm now has a website it can put in front of global port operators without caveats. The consultancy and engineering offers are legible at a glance, the track record is visible rather than implied, and the case study framework means new proof gets published as a content task, not a development project.
What we learned
Firms with deep, genuine track records are often the worst at showing them. Trent had numbers most competitors would kill for, and they lived in proposals and slide decks rather than on the website. Pulling those figures into the content draft stage, before any design work, meant the design brief became "present this proof" rather than "make it look professional", which is a much easier problem to solve well.
The other lesson was about templates. Building the case study format as a reusable structure, even before the first case study existed, gave the client a reason to collect approvals from their own clients. An empty section with a good template gets filled. A vague intention to "add case studies later" does not.
