EXERTIS NATIONAL DISTRIBUTION CENTRE
Tech triumph Many comms products are distributed by Exertis and will come through its National Distribution Centre in Burnley on its delivery journey, which uses technology to the best effect to help ensure that orders reach customers on time.
Exertis is one of the biggest distributors of comms equipment in the UK, and many of those products come through the company’s National Distribution Centre (NDC) on the outskirts of Burnley. The NDC, which has had £90 million invested in it, is part of Exertis’ plans to continue its growth in the UK and to enhance its value-added services to the retailers. To say the NDC is massive is an understatement. The footprint of the building is 52,000sq metres, of which 43,000sq m is dedicated to the warehouse – about the size of five football pitches – and there is room to expand it by up to another 18,000sq m. The workable height is 18.8m – that’s the same as four double-decker buses stacked on top of one another. At its heart is the pick tower – 43 100-metre long and 16-metre-high aisles packed with 31,000 pallets of electronic products. To access these pallets, employees use specialised forklift trucks that can rise to the
top of the aisles. These forklifts are the largest of their kind – were the aisles any taller, then cranes would have to be used. Some larger products – more than 47” wide or high for instance – are stored elsewhere in the NDC. With a warehouse this big, it is no surprise that the volume of products that are shipped in and out of it each day is huge too. Exertis ships 17 million units every year through this operation on average, according to Sion Wineyard, Exertis’ chief logistics officer. During the pandemic, this mushroomed to 21 million. As you would expect, with this volume of products, Exertis’ processes are extremely well-honed – so much so that 99.56% of orders are delivered the next day – an industry-leading figure, according to Wineyard. Every day, about 90 articulated trucks deliver into the NDC between 6am- 2pm, dropping off 650 pallets and 500 SKUs on average, although at peak times in November and December, this rises to 1,300
Sion Wineyard Chief Logistics Officer
exertis.co.uk
The vast pick tower at Exertis' NDC
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