Keeping the Wine Flowing

Allport have just completed its first six months managing ASDA's beers, wines and spirits imports, moving some 6,500 containers. This brings the total volume managed for ASDA across the various business units to more than 25,000 TEUs.

Of particular interest was the management of stock sourced for the all important Christmas trading period. The emphasis on balancing demand and supply has never been more prevalent, given the difficulties of scarce European haulage and high volume ordering within such a short period of time.

Amongst the various promotional lines managed, the Cava project was perhaps the most high profile, given the volatile demand and suppliers' finite capacity both in terms of production and collection slot availability. In the past, the potential cost of stock outs caused by interrupted product flow was countered by the risk of incurring unnecessary demurrage and storage costs from over-ordering.

Dean Bauer from the Supply Chain Management Division explains how the project was managed. "Our approach with ASDA was to extend the import period and ensure that ordering was more in tune with current sales and anticipated demand.

By applying this strategy, together with advanced planning with carriers and suppliers, the Cava promotion launched on time ahead of the competition and achieved 100% shelf availability throughout the duration of the Christmas period, with zero demurrage costs incurred."

Ensuring supply chain flexibility during promotional periods is critical to the success of any import process. The ability to moderate the velocity of product flow in rapid response to sales demand will continue to be a key factor in keeping costs in the supply chain to a minimum. The driver of this flexibility is collaboration with service providers and for this reason Allport, acting as a neutral freight manager, continue to place great emphasis on developing relationships both with its own carriers and those contracted by clients directly.

Find out more about Allport's Beverage Logistics services by contacting info@allport.co.uk