Dutch B2B group Hagemeyer specialises in supplying the electrical materials, safety and Maintenance and Repair Operations (MRO) sectors throughout Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. In the UK, Hagemeyer has three main brand names – Newey & Erye, WF Electrical and Parker Merchanting, each of which has operated its own supply chain. However, that is no longer the case as the company has been centralising the supply chains into one operation.
The company recently brought together more than 300 suppliers at its very first Supplier Forum. Ian Beaumont, Hagemeyer UK’s supply chain director, explains the reasoning behind the Forum: “That was just to communicate to our suppliers what we are doing with our business which has been in a state of flux for about three years.”
Beaumont says that traditionally all of Hagemeyer’s businesses operated independently – there were eight or nine different brands operating independently. “If you take the worse scenario inside the M25, the business most probably has 25 branches all operating independently, all purchasing product from the same suppliers, some serving the same customers and each branch was in effect its own business run by a manager who was accountable for everything within that branch.”
That created a lot of stock, inefficient use, there were about 800 vehicles on the road.
Hagemeyer had two regional distribution centres (RDCs) in Warrington, which served Newey & Eyre in the North-west, and in Dagenham, which was dedicated to WF. There was no crossover between the two RDCs, although the product portfolio had about an 80% crossover. Both received exactly the same product but ran different systems.
Having decided that a new logistics strategy was required based on three key elements. hageymer in the uklIt has three main brand names – Newey & Erye, WF Electrical and Parker Merhanting.
Electrical wholesaler Newey & Eyre has 160 branches nationwide. Its customers are trade, rather than consumer.
WF Electrical is similar to Newey & Eyre but focuses on small- to medium-sized businesses. It has 65 branches predominantly in the South and some in Wales.
Parker Merchanting supplies safety equipment to construction and industrial businesses.
Hagemeyer’s UK turnover is Euro 700M-800M. Group turnover is about Euro 8Bn.
About 90% of Hagemeyer’s trade is for next-day delivery.Beaumont explains: “We needed to implement a new enterprise management system, and we chose Movex. We created a national distribution centre at Runcorn which is a 330,000sq ft automated, high-bay facility with a Univeyor conveyor system.”
He says the plan is for that facility to be the NDC for all Hagemeyer’s businesses. The 8,370sq m (90,000sq ft) Warrington RDC is now the national return centre while the 25,110sq m (270,000sq ft) Dagenham facility is undergoing a change of use – it will become a “superhub” for the South-east for all of the business rather than being dedicated DC.
Newey & Eyre is being rolled out onto the
