Unifi Brand Guidelines: Delta Global Services, Argenbright & a 2020 Name

An airline subsidiary finds a new owner.

Unifi is the name an Atlanta ground-handling business has carried since the end of the 2010s, but its roots run back to an airline. The trade magazine Airside International, in a profile published in March 2022, traced the company to Delta Global Services (DGS), a wholly owned subsidiary that Delta Air Lines set up in the late 1990s to provide aviation services, and above all ground handling, for its narrowbody domestic flights at airports across the United States. Over the following two decades DGS took on work for other US carriers as well as Delta.

The change of control came at the end of 2018. Argenbright Holdings, a US provider of aviation services and contract security, took over management of the DGS business in a deal that became effective on 21 December 2018, Airside International reported. DGS and Argenbright were then brought together under a new name, Unifi. English Wikipedia, which calls the subsidiary DAL Global Services, says Delta kept a minority stake, giving the split as 80% for Argenbright and 20% for Delta, and dates the public rebrand to February 2020. In 2022 the magazine said the work of renaming every part of the business was still going on.

Unifi’s own history page tells the same story in its own words: DGS and Argenbright Holdings “became one – and Unifi was born.” Today the company describes itself as part of the Argenbright Group, whose founder and executive chairman is Frank A. Argenbright Jr., and gives its headquarters as Atlanta, the home city of Delta. Its biggest station, Airside International reported in 2022, was Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where it then had upwards of 3,000 employees.

Ramps, cabins, wheelchairs and cargo.

Scale is central to how Unifi presents itself. In 2022 Airside International put it at more than 200 US airports and about a million flights a year, with customers including legacy and low-cost US airlines on domestic routes and cargo carriers such as Amazon. By 2026 the company’s own figures had grown: its January 2026 press release describes Unifi as “the largest ground handling provider in North America,” with more than 45,000 employees at more than 240 airports. Those are the company’s figures.

Its service list is broad. The magazine’s 2022 list ran from ramp and passenger handling, including wheelchair assistance, to aircraft cleaning, airport janitorial work, crew shuttle buses, de-icing, cargo handling, fuelling and facility security, all of it based at airports. The company’s aviation page groups its work under aircraft services — cabin appearance, fuelling, ramp handling, de-icing, cargo handling and catering provisioning — and passenger services such as check-in, skycaps, wheelchair services and lost baggage, plus security and transport for crews and airport staff.

Growth since 2023 has come largely through acquisitions. In July 2023 Unifi agreed to buy Up & Away, a British aircraft cabin-cleaning firm, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported; the paper said Up & Away was founded in 2008 and had about 400 employees across 13 UK airports, doing cabin cleaning, de-icing and private-jet detailing. Unifi’s page for the business, now Up & Away Aviation Detailing, confirms the July 2023 purchase. In April 2024 Unifi announced the acquisition of Prospect Airport Services, founded in 1966 by Robert and Mary Strobel, which the press release said worked at airports in more than 30 cities, with baggage handling, lost and found, aircraft cleaning and wheelchair assistance as its main services. Unifi said the deal made it the largest provider of airport wheelchair services in the United States.

Europe followed. On 29 January 2026 Unifi announced the acquisition of Viggo, a Dutch ground handler founded in 1974 that handles passengers, baggage and ramps at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and Eindhoven Airport. In October 2026 the company described Viggo as part of the Unifi family when it reported that Viggo had been awarded one of three seven-year ramp and baggage handling licences at Schiphol, starting on 28 March 2027. In March 2026 Unifi said it had started full ground handling for TUI Airways at London Gatwick, and in November 2026 the Jersey news site Bailiwick Express reported that Unifi had opened Unifi Aviation Jersey, offering cleaning and detailing for executive aircraft at the Gama Aviation base at Jersey Airport.

Design and documentation.

Ground handling and airport-service firms work out of sight of most travellers, on aprons, in cargo sheds and behind check-in desks, so their public identity is built mostly from their own websites, press releases and careers pages. The companies in this guide load and unload aircraft, check in passengers, move baggage, build and break down cargo pallets and, in some cases, fuel aircraft, usually under contract to airlines rather than in their own name.

Photography does much of the work. Handlers publish pictures of ramp and terminal staff in branded uniforms and high-visibility vests, of tugs, belt loaders and pushback tractors in company colours, and of warehouses lined with pallets. Where a handler runs lounges or premium passenger services, those pages show the brand in front of travellers rather than airlines.

The second staple is the network. Station maps, airport counts, staff numbers and annual figures for flights, passengers or tonnes appear on almost every corporate site, and they change often as contracts are won, lost or bought. Service lists follow a common pattern, split into ramp, passenger, cargo, mail and fuelling work, though each company names and groups them in its own way, and the counts in this guide are given as each company or a dated source states them.

Recruitment is the third. Ground handling depends on large shift-based workforces, and careers pages, training academies and values statements sit prominently on these sites. Ownership is often a story of acquisitions, airline spin-offs and investment funds, so the guides that follow give dates and sources for who owns each company.

“Elevate People.”

Unifi’s brand language is short and repeated. Its stated vision is “to be the most respected aviation services company in the world,” its purpose is to “Elevate People,” and its values are listed as Passion, Integrity and Empathy. Its homepage line is “Where Excellence Takes Flight,” and in July 2026 it released a brand video under the heading “One Team. One Vision. One Unifi.”, presenting staff in Atlanta and London as working toward the same vision.

The name also works as an umbrella. The Unifi website lists Prospect Airport Services, Up & Away Aviation Detailing and VIGGO as its brands, each keeping its own name, so the group runs a family of names under one parent rather than a single badge everywhere. In Jersey the new business carries the parent name, as Unifi Aviation Jersey, while the detailing work is done through the Up & Away subsidiary, Bailiwick Express reported.

Much of the company’s public image is made on the apron. Airside International illustrated its 2022 profile with Unifi’s ground support equipment at Las Vegas, describing a large fleet used in day-to-day work, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a company photograph of Unifi staff handling an Aer Lingus flight at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Its careers pages are prominent too, with sections on why to work for the company, who it hires, and a page for refugees and newcomers.

For a design guide, Unifi shows how one short name chosen after a change of ownership can be stretched over a growing group of handlers with their own names. Compare PrimeFlight, another US airport-services company, and Swissport, a ground handler that also began inside an airline. For this guide we use a runway blue and an apron teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Unifi’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.