BOC buys food fleet
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• BOC Baker has entered into a contract distribution deal with chilled food producer RF Brookes in which it will buy the company's 14-vehicle fleet and run its operation, delivering food to Marks & Spencer.
It will also take on Brookes' 17 staff, who are mostly drivers, to service the contract.
BOC will wholly own the vehicles and will use any spare capacity to carry products for its other customers.
The contract will operate with BOC delivering food products from Brookes' two production plants at Wigston, Leicester and Rogerston, Gwent on a twice-daily cycle to eight depots servicing M&S retail outlets nationwide.
Brookes, a subsidiary of Ranks Hovis McDougall, is one of M&S's largest suppliers of chilled and frozen food. The value of the contract is unknown but tactically the new fleet is important to BOC for geographical reasons.
Rick Turnbull, managing director of Brookes, says he withdrew from running his own fleet because the "operation was peripheral to our core business."