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The UK’s largest cold storage and distribution provider has invested more than £500,000 in the creation of a state-of-the-art ambient storage chamber at its Grimsby depot.
The 65,000 sq ft refurbished store provides more than 7,500 pallet spaces within Yearsley Group’s existing warehouse facility.
The creation of an ambient offering comes in response to demand from local manufacturers and importers using Humber Bank Port, to use a single supplier for both their frozen and dry goods. The newly refurbished dry goods store complements the group‘s traditional frozen storage offering, which extends to 40,000 pallets at Grimsby. It is expected that existing customers will want to take space in both sections, for both raw materials and packaging, as well as finished products. It is also aimed at new customers for whom frozen storage is not required, and could even be used to store non-food items such as homewares and electricals.
Harry Yearsley, managing director of Yearsley Group, said: “We store and distribute a lot of frozen stock on behalf of local manufacturers and importers using the Humber ports, and we realised many of them also have a requirement for dry goods storage. Rather than split their deliveries - taking on additional contracts, management time and road miles - we took a decision to invest in our facility in order to offer that additional service to our customers.
“Bringing the same level of service, quality of customer relations and best-in-class warehouse management system that we offer for cold storage to the ambient market, will also open up new opportunities for us in the area, enabling us to extend our service provision to a whole new range of customers.”
The ambient store maximises space with the use of narrow aisles, accessed with a fleet of ‘articulated’ forklift trucks which have the capability to retrieve pallets as well as individual cases. These hi-tech articulated trucks are supplied by Aisle-Master and driven by fully trained, dedicated staff.
A host of ancillary services are also available, including individual order picking, shrink wrapping and of course onward dispatch. It is anticipated the new storage facility will also require the creation of new jobs, as customers start to come online.
The new storage space provides additional support for the Yearsley Group Vendor Management service offering – whereby suppliers to local manufacturers store all their raw materials in one place, reducing the amount of storage required by each individual manufacturer and enabling them to place specific orders as required. Storage of the frozen and non frozen raw materials in the same place reduces management time for manufacturers and enables better consolidation of loads.
All customers will also have access to Yearsley Group’s bespoke warehouse management system Net Stock, enabling real time review of all stock stored within the Yearsley Group network. Yearsley Group consolidates stock from hundreds of manufacturers in its national network of 12 cold stores, enabling customers to reduce their own storage requirements. And with a fleet of more than 300 temperature controlled vehicles, Yearsley Group is also able to offer both collection of products and distribution into the UK’s largest retailers and food service providers any time of the day or night, providing a 24-hour, seven day delivery capability.
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