Contract distributor Glass Glover has gone national with its year-old
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flower transport venture Bloemfresh. Re-named Flowerflow, the operation has kicked off with a £5 million contract from supermarket giant Safeway.
• Distributor Glass Glover has launched what it claims is Britain's biggest horticultural transport operation which will use 20 trucks to deliver plants and flowers to 300 Safeway stores nationwide. The company will also dedicate at least one of its 14 depots to the Flowed'low venture.
Glass Glover Distribution's managing director John Adamson, who hopes to expand the service to other retailers, says Flowerflow represents part of his plan to attack niche markets outside supermarket deliveries, including fast food, DIY and the record industry. The company already handles contract distribution for Tesco, Asda and Littlewoods.
It has been running a flower transport service for a year, in association with a Dutch flower supplier, delivering to the South-East. The partnership, Bloemfresh, has been scrapped, and its five trucks reliveried to join a new Flowerflow fleet of 15 Leyland Daf rigids. The move has created more than 40 jobs.
SOLE SUPPLIER
Glass Glover will act as sole supplier to Safeway. Shop managers will order direct from suppliers in the UK and Holland, and they, or their subcontractors, will deliver to Glass Glover warehouses at Rotherham, Edinburgh and Luton. Deliveries will then be made in Flowerflow vehicles to stores.
Eventually Adamson hopes to take over collections from growers and offer a startto-finish distribution service to customers or suppliers. The operation is currently working at only a third of its capacity, says Adamson, who joined Glass Glover from Exel Logistics in May after almost 20 years with NFC.
"We hope to start bringing in other business by June," he says. "In three years only a.third of our work will be for Safeway. But Safeway is growing fast and we expect a lot of expansion with them." Because the contract only involves store deliveries at the moment, all the vehicles return to depots empty. Once it wins business with suppliers, however, Adamson hopes trucks will return 30% full.
A big selling point for the service will be that it is temperature-controlled all the way through. All its warehouses have refrigerated rooms, and the trucks have a moving bulkhead which allows pot plants to be kept warm and moist in one compartment, and flowers chilled in the other.
This type of care can add weeks to the life of flowers, says Adamson, and is something many small distributors and retailers ignore. Something outside its control, however, is the way plants are transported to Glass Glover's warehouses by suppliers. Although Safeway's own requirements on the growers are tough, says Adamson, this is a factor which might sway other retailers to opt for a start-to-finish service from Glass Glover.
Plants will be kept in the warehouse for as short a time as possible. Previous day deliveries will be sent out again by 4am at the latest. Because the company is using three regional hubs, with a fourth satellite depot in Chepstow, and round-the-clock deliveries, distribution is much more efficient than most flower transport operations, says Adamson. "The time between picking a flower and having it on the supermarket shelf is often four days. We have cut it to 24 or 36 hours."
Apart from the existing five 7.5-tonne Leyland Daf Roadrunners previously run in Bloemfresh colours, Flowerflow has bought seven Roadrunners, two Leyland Daf 12.5-tonners and one 16.5-tonner. Three more 7.5-tonners and one each of the bigger vehicles are on order. All the GRP Massey bodies have a side door for access to the front compartment.
GREEN LIVERY
Although loads are light, Adamson has decided against using drawbars or artics. "These are only practical for long-distance work. Because our drivers will be making multi-drops, bigger vehicles don't make sense," he says. Each truck makes about 12 deliveries a day. A typical store's order is for 10 boxes.
The boxes vary in size and are carried on two-metre-high cages. The cages are fitted in the old Bloemfresh vehicles, with an aisle. In busy times such as St Valentine's and Mothers' Day extra cages can be loaded up the middle. In the new trucks, cages are put on and strapped.
The rather bland Bloemfresh livery has been changed to a green and white colour scheme on the new vehicles. Sideguards and wheel hubs are also painted green. Because the design is so complex, it is done by transfer rather than signwritten, but the aim is to give the venture an obvious on-road presence in the hope that it will attract business, says Adamson.
The operation is being headed by Graham Sawyer, who was previously general manager of Bloemfresh. Under him will be a manager at each depot, 30 office and warehouse staff and 30 drivers. Out of the depots, only Rotherham will be dedicated to Flowerflow. Edinburgh and Luton share the business with other Glass Glover distribution contracts. Bloemfresh was based at Windsor.
As part of his strategy to attract customers for a complete logistics deal Adamson is considering a packaging service. Currently, all orders for shops arrive at Glass Glover warehouses readypacked. But providing packing could be a major selling tool for Dutch flower grow ers, who tend to prefer sending to a major customer in bulk.
This would allow a flower supplier in Holland to use Glass Glover to collect all its deliveries for England from its base and allocate them from Glass Glover warehouses in the UK to customers. But Flowerflow will only move into this if it is a contract requirement of a major client.
With Bloemfresh, Glass Glover distributed plants grown by its partner, De Konning of Aalsmeer, near Amsterdam, to 80 Tesco, Asda and Safeway stores in the South-East. But when it started carrying small loads for other suppliers, it decided to relaunch the service as a third-party distributor, says Adamson.
Flowerflow only needs an 8% increase in existing business to go into profit, he says. The three-year contract with Safeway — launched in early February to allow a settling-in period before Mothers' Day on 25 March — includes guaranteed payments to cover quieter times of the year.
BIGGEST CONTRACT
Glass Glover Distribution, which turns over £72 million and employs 2,700 staff, is part of the farm-to-property Glass Glover group, and, according to Adamson, is the UK's third biggest contract distributor. Its biggest contract — with Tesco — is shared with Exel, Hays and Tesco's in-house fleet. It runs a warehouse and handles distribution for Asda in Wigan, and has other deals with Safeway, Gateway and Littlewoods.
It has just won more Tesco business. The retailer is shutting its Thombury depot near Bristol, run by Exel Logistics, and is moving its South-West distribution to Glass Glover's warehouse at Chepstow. Glass Glover will trunk 14 truckloads a night there from its Manchester depot. A new contract with drinks and cigarette distributor North West Vintners involves 10 vehicles delivering to Kwik Save shops in the South-West and South Wales, also from Chepstow. Some 90% of Glass Glover's fleet is in customers' liveries.
Adamson is cautious about going into Europe. Although the company has a clearing house in Sheerness and a distribution depot in Lille, in a joint venture with Kent transport company Jack Henley, he says the commercial culture on the Continent does not make it easy for a contract distributor to make inroads.
In the UK, 40% of distribution is now undertaken by third parties. In the rest of Europe the figure is only 8%. "We've held back from ventures in Europe," says Adamson. "But there might be an opportunity to go in with an existing customer, or with a European retailer wanting to get into the UK."
E by Murdo Morrison