Following a long-standing partnership with leading European supply chain specialist Wincanton, Waitrose has extended both its in-store wines and Wines Direct warehousing contracts by five years. The £25M contract is based at Wincanton’s bonded warehouse in Greenford, and entails storing globally imported wine for the grocery outlet.
The bonded store extends the boundaries of Customs and Excise duty requirements, delaying the payment of tax until the wine is moved to one of two distribution centres at Milton Keynes and Brinklow.
The warehouse also stores the wine for the Waitrose Wines Direct service and boxes anything from one bottle of wine upwards, which is then collected by courier for home delivery. In addition, Wincanton also holds the logistics contract for Waitrose-owned subsidiary company FMT, providing the storage and delivery of wines to prestigious establishments, including Buckingham Palace.
Based in a shared-user facility, the amount of warehouse space has to be extremely flexible due to seasonal demand. The busiest time of year – the five weeks prior to Christmas – sees a 100% increase in stock and staff numbers are adapted accordingly.
Commenting on the contract extension, Andy Soper, general manager of distribution for Waitrose says: “As we have had such a long and reliable history with Wincanton, it made perfect sense to renew the existing logistics contract with them. Wincanton offers both the bonded warehouse and distribution centres we need, and operates in a professional and consistent manner.”
l German Caterpillar Motoren has selected Wincanton Fenthols to manage its European supply logistics. Wincanton will organise the supply chain for Caterpillar’s two production sites in Germany at Kiel and Rostock. The yearly volume handled via the European network that Wincanton operates amounts to more than 13,000 tonnes of accessory parts, which are required to produce large ship diesel engines and emergency power supply units.Irreplaceable recordings by some of the world’s best-loved rock, pop and reggae artists are being preserved for future generations after leading UK entertainment giant Universal Music awarded a prestigious contract to storage specialist TNT Archive Services. Thousands of original tracks by legendary performers such as Bob Marley and Elton John, sit at TNT Archive Services’ hi-tech London base, in temperature and humidity-controlled facilities to preserve the clarity of the recordings.
TNT Archive Services – part of express delivery giant TNT Express Services – won the five-year contract to store and catalogue 200,000 tapes, as well as 12,000 archive boxes. A stringent security regime, including video surveillance and access control, safeguards the priceless recordings, while a sophisticated gas suppression system provides state of the art fire protection.
The partnership with Universal Music has proved so successful that other operating units of the Universal group, including Universal Pictures Universal Publishing and Universal Music International, are putting their precious recordings in the hands of TNT Archive Services. TNT now stores some 250,000 media items for Universal and 30,000 archive boxes.
Giles Brown, divisional general manager of TNT Archive Services, says: “This contract is a perfect match – Universal demand an exceptionally high standard of care for their tapes and TNT Archive Services offers only the very highest quality of service to its clients. Being an integrated part of TNT Express Services means TNT Archive Services can offer major advantage to our customer – swift and timely deliveries of their stored material whenever they need it. For example, this contract requires three delivered each day, as well as emergency deliveries of tapes to artists in recording studios. With studio time costing up to £1,500 a day, TNT’s prompt and reliable express delivery service is vital to minimising costs.”
