Hays scoops Waitrose
Page 13
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
by Juliet Parish • Waitrose plans to cut its distribution costs with a £40m depot which will enable it to reduce the number of subcontractors it uses. The number of trucks which supply its stores will be cut from 370 to 200 a day by 1995.
The new site at Brinklow, near Milton Keynes, has been unveiled by Hays, which will become the grocery chain's only major outside contractor this October.
Waitrose is dropping the three other major contractors which employ 58 drivers on its work. Its own fleet of 200 trailers and 100 trucks will be reduced "substantially".
The losers will be Sea-field Distribution, Lowfield Distribution and P&O Distribution.
Seafield will pull 31 drivers off the bread distribution contract at its sites at Olney, Bucks and Peasmarsh, Surrey this summer. Tring, Herts-based Lowfield will withdraw 15 drivers from distributing Waiirose's non-food products this month. And P&O in Greenford will finish a 12-driver wines and spirits distribution contract in May.
Once these contracts are ended the network of depots feeding Waitrose's 102 stores will be cut from three to nine, but manufac
turers will alsoc continue to supply the stores direct.
The three remaining sites after October will be Hays' depots in Brinklow and Theale, Berks and Waitrose's Bracknell warehouses. They will be supplied from Hays' frozen food site at Tongwell and a bakery at Marlborough, Wilts. Both these depots have lost their fleets of around 20 vehicles. In 1995 the Theale site will he closed and its chilled work will move to a new warehouse being built at Bracknell which will service the 52 southern sites. Brinklow will handle the 50 northern sites.
Hugh Lambert, Waitrose's manager of contract distribution, says the shake-up will lead to "substantial savings".