Friday 13th November 2009
Bestway Opens Coventry Warehouse as Main Distribution Hub
£6 million investment maintains Bestway commitment to its customers on range and availability.
More evidence of Bestway working hard to deliver better availability and range of products for its independent retailer customers was seen this week when the Bestway chairman, Sir Anwar Pervez and the group’s directors officially opened the redeveloped and enlarged central distribution wholesale warehouse at Coventry in the Midlands.
Very nearly 250,000 sq ft. of warehousing space from an original space of 140,000 sq ft. in 2001, when the site was purchased, is now available to the Bestway group to take direct delivery from suppliers and then to ship to any one of the group’s Bestway and Batleys 52 depots across England, Scotland and Wales. Built at a cost of just over £6 million, the state of the art warehouse will now become the central distribution hub and will speed up delivery and availability for independent customers everywhere and endorses the group’s mission of helping the independents to build their business still further.
Younus Sheikh, managing director of Bestway Cash and Carry said at the opening, “The increased space at Coventry will go a long way to enhance our availability and range of products to depots and onwards to our many varied customers. To be continuing to invest in our business in the midst of one of the worse recessions we have ever seen is a good indication of how we view things and proves we can still continue to provide the best prices and the best value and availability to our customers.”
The transport arrangements to deliver goods to each depot around the UK is undertaken by Colton Commercial Transport, who have a fleet of 45 tractors available at any one time and this will enable 9.2 million cases of product to be handled through the warehouse, this figure will increase next year to 11.1 million.
The general manager of the Coventry warehouse, Brian Hale said, “We are delighted with the way the new additions to the site have worked out and already we have seen indications of improvements in availability of stock and deliveries across the group to 98.1 per cent across all product ranges. The improvements to the Coventry site will mean that more jobs will be available during the course of the next few months. We expect up to 80 staff will eventually be employed by next year.”