Wincanton has worked in partnership with an industry-leading food and drink company since 2000, managing warehousing and co-packing from a UK distribution centre as part of its supply chain to UK retailers.

Both parties have worked collaboratively to deliver a major in-store promotional activity for a leading supermarket. The success and smooth execution of the project has built trust between Wincanton and the food and drink company for further activity, with seven additional waves confirmed throughout 2021 following on from the success of the first promotion in February 2021.

Promotional activity for a range of food and drinks within a major UK supermarket began in 2021. Goods were available in-store by way of a pre-filled merchandising display unit (‘shipper’), which were built and assembled by Wincanton’s co-packing team. Both Wincanton and its customer worked in collaboration to plan the physical delivery of the premium product, establishing open communication and clear times lines for success.

Wincanton and the customer worked in collaboration to align the delivery of co-packing and logistics activity against a wide variety of factors including initial concept and design marketing, product and brand guidelines and budget.

Practical solutions were essential to the success of the shipper promotion. Wincanton developed an approach to storage and delivery that saw two shippers stacked and wrapped back-to-back on one pallet as banded pairs. It also conducted trials via its market-leading warehouse management system (WMS) to ensure that the banded pairs of shippers could be tracked and traced individually once palletised, maintaining stock and inventory visibility and operational efficiency.

As a result of meticulous planning and preparation though collaborative working, the shipper activity was executed smoothly with 100% accuracy across all KPIs and on-time in-full (OTIF) deliveries. This is an exceptional record in a manual environment and a result of quality control by Wincanton at each stage of picking, receiving and dispatching an order.

Following the success of the initial promotion Wincanton was tasked with delivering seven separate promotional activities throughout 2021. This volume increase would require a major increase in output from the co-packing team with no drop in performance.

Working to a tight deadline Wincanton has tripled its co-packing output at the distribution centre for the customer in the first half of 2021. Delivering at pace, the first pick for the first wave of promotional activities took place on 1st February, with 1,600 shipper units built in 15 days and delivered into the supermarkets’ distribution network. Wincanton has achieved 100% on-time in-full delivery accuracy across the first four promotional activities in 2021.