Alliance Flooring Distribution is the UK delivery organisation for carpets and underlay products manufactured by subsidiaries of Victoria plc, an international enterprise specialising in premium flooring products. Carpet rolls woven by a group factory in South Wales are marketed into the UK through three regional distribution centres. Alliance also works with a third-party carrier to process orders for Ireland.
Operations from Kidderminster and Hemel Hempstead are managed by Alliance Flooring Distribution. The third RDC is run by View Logistics in Hartlepool, another group company covering sales outlets in the North of England and Scotland.
Each of these sites are fully equipped transport hubs with warehouse and bespoke handling facilities for the storage of carpet rolls. Orders from retail outlets throughout the country are processed by cutting the stock carpet rolls to size and wrapping them for despatch. This is a 24 hours operation as customer orders are consolidated for bulk deliveries overnight.
The fuelling points for both centres are monitored from Kidderminster using Merridale’s hosted Fuel Management service, FuelWorks. This provides a web-based dashboard giving current stock levels at each site, and thereby allowing centralised procurement.
“So now we have with Merridale FuelWorks I can review our re-order stock levels at both sites. We use this visibility to take advantage of spot prices on the day. Generally, we are taking delivery of fuel supplies at Kidderminster every week and we benefit by being able to compare best offers between our two regular suppliers.”
“Alliance Flooring operates a fleet of around sixty HGVs including 12 articulated units for long distance trunking,” explains National Distribution Manager, Kevin Waters.
“All our fleet vehicles are fitted with long range tanks, so that external fuelling is really just a contingency measure. In addition to stock management, the Merridale system captures all the data we require for cost accounting and vehicle mpg performance. This is essential because the Alliance Fleet is accredited to the Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS). This means we have to show that we have procedures in place to measure CO2 emissions.
“As with most fleet operators, fuel is a major cost factor. Our annual fuel bill is currently running at around £1.3M. It is important therefore that we have effective fuel management procedures in place to ensure we measure usage down to the last drop.
Kevin Waters continues. “As our business operations are expanding, we have recently completed two major development milestones; the Kidderminster depot has been moved to a bigger site which necessitated the relocation of the fuelling point and we have replicated these facilities, together with a new storage tank and fuelling point at Hemel Hempstead.
“So now we have with Merridale FuelWorks I can review our re-order stock levels at both sites. We use this visibility to take advantage of spot prices on the day. Generally, we are taking delivery of fuel supplies at Kidderminster every week and we benefit by being able to compare best offers between our two regular suppliers.”
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