OPERATOR PROFILE
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distribution functions together.
Sainsbury was one of the first retailers to award UCD a dedicated contract; the depot at Warmley, near Bristol, shares a site with a St Ivel common-user operation and serves roughly the same stores which draw their ambient supplies from the big Yate depot run for Sainsbury by NFC.
MAJOR CONTRACTS
In 1986 UCD won its fourth dedicated — and first frozen food — distribution contract, awarded by Tesco for a 22,400m3 cold store depot in Manchester, which delivers to over 100 stores in the North and, via UCD's Broxburn common-user depot, in Scotland. In a three-month period during 1987 four new major contracts with supermarket chains were won, all of which are now operational.
It was UCD's ability to "plug into" an existing computerised ordering and stock control system which also found favour with Wm Morrison (Supermarkets).
Stock replenishment orders placed on UCD's Ossett depot near Wakefield, for daily delivery to Morrison's 38 retail outlets, are determined by Morrison's own computer system. The 46 Morrison suppliers, including the company's own packing company, Farmers Boy, bring the products in bulk to Ossett, where they are checked, picked and loaded during the evening, for delivery in three "waves" — to quote UCD regional manager James Mounty — as scheduled departure times through the night.
All the Morrison deliveries are made between midnight and 6am, so UCD is able to double-shift those vehicles during the day they are used for Ossett's common-user deliveries.
Following Tesco's acquisition of the Hillards chain, UCD's frozen food contract with Tesco has been extended. A new 22,650m3 cold store has been commissioned at Warrington, to augment the unit at Manchester. Over 130 Tesco outlets are now being served by UCD from the depots at Manchester and Warrington.
Another UCD contract linked to a supermarket acquisition is with the Dee Corporation's Gateway stores in Scotland and the North of England, including former Fine Fare outlets. UCD's 2,000m2 depot at Broxburn has been reorganised
to cope with the Gateway business, which has almost doubled its throughput of chilled products.
In the Midlands UCD has taken over part of a former Christian Salvesen chilled store at Atherstone to handle specialist chilled products and flowers for the Safeway supermarket chain, which is now part of the Argyll group.
Atherstone supplies products for Safeway nationwide. They are delivered direct, or tntnked to one of three dedicated depots operated by UCD for Argyll at Exeter, Chadwell Heath (Essex) and Birtley (Tyneside). Atherstone is handling over 110,000 cases a week for Safeway, with the prospect of a significant increase to come. Dedicated UCD vehicles service the contract.
DEDICATED DISTRIBUTION
Looking ahead, the third-party dedicated distribution concept looks certain to be extended further to cover more than one temperature discipline, says Burbage, through the development of "combi" depots. Such facilities, occupying 6-8ha sites with up to 30,0000 of cold-store floor space, would stock and distribute a combination of products: chilled, frozen, ambient, non-foods and possibly even wines and spirits.
Multi-compartment vehicles, probably with movable partitions catering for percentage variations in consignment mix, will be required for the full potential of combi depots to be realised.
Such is the vigorous pace of development in grocery retailing and distribution — spurred on by contract specialists like UCD — that Burbage predicts that up to 40 combi depots are likely to be given the go-ahead in the UK in the next three to four years.
by Alan Bunting