Doorstep delivery success
The New Year got off to a brisk start for Arla Foods' business mail and parcels service.
About 200,000 items per week, compared with 30,000 before Christmas, were delivered to homes in the first half of January. Timed to go out straight after the holiday, they included such items as brochures for Saga Holidays and Which magazine.
According to Richard Monk, who leads the parcels operations team, the company's success in handling these volumes will provide the basis for growing the business as further opportunities come along.
Express gained a long-term licence from Postcomm, the postal services regulator, last April, with the result that the company can now deliver up to 46 million postal items each year.
One of the highlights so far was last June when franchisees delivered 500,000 voucher booklets and 350,000 Nestlé coffee samples to doorstep customers. However, unlike the post-Christmas rush, these unaddressed items were delivered to existing doorstep customers.
The removal of the Royal Mail monopoly for bulk deliveries is providing Arla Foods with the chance to widen the scope of the environmentally friendly milk float fleet.
Arla Foods UK plc is home to some of the UK’s leading dairy brands including Cravendale, Lurpak and Anchor. Processing approximately two billion litres of milk a year Arla continues to be one of the UK’s leading dairy companies and a supplier of fresh liquid milk and cream to the top seven retailers.
Over 2,500 daily deliveries are made directly to stores nationwide and Arla brands can be found across the dairy category. As well as the leader of the butter, spreads and margarine sector, and a major supplier of other added value products including flavoured milk and cheese, Arla continues to build working relationships with Arla Foods Milk Partnership, a unique group of dairy farmers, which supplies around 90 per cent of Arla's total milk requirements.
Behind this leading business is a team of circa 2,800 people across the UK located at our dairies, distribution centres and head office.