Leading UK food retailers and suppliers have agreed to bury the hatchet and set up a ground-breaking project to explore collaborative distribution.
The project, which follows a similar initiative in Ireland, is managed by ECR (Efficient Consumer Response) UK and will explore ways to optimise primary distribution (from factories to retail depots) and secondary distribution (from retail depots to stores).
Group members, some of which are direct competitors, will look at how they can work together to increase vehicle and warehouse utilisation in order to reduce costs and improve efficiency, said the ECR UK co-chair and Nestlé supply chain director Chris Tyas.
He added: "It's too early to talk about specific opportunities in terms of what information will be shared with whom, but we will be focusing on making the transport of goods into major conurbations more efficient in the face of rising congestion. It may be that we need to have more staging depots closer to conurbations so that the secondary distribution leg is shorter, for example."
The other priority for ECR UK was improving on-shelf availability, said Tyas.
"We are continuing our work on retail-ready packaging and have also agreed a new system of codes to help staff in retail backrooms identify seasonal lines for occasions, such as Halloween, Easter or Mother's Day, more easily."
The quarterly industry availability surveys conducted by ECR UK and the grocery think-tank IGD would also be extended into the convenience sector from September, he said.