Birmingham, UK: Organisers of IMHX 2021, the exhibition for the UK’s logistics and supply chain sectors, have warned that grocery supply chains may have to look at building greater resilience into their models and holding higher levels of inventory on certain goods.
Rob Fisher, group director, IMHX said: “The UK’s grocery supply chains are for the most part highly efficient, run on a just-in-time basis, which would normally provide an efficient supply of low-cost food. However, it would seem, according to pundits, that it only takes a modest unexpected surge in demand to create empty shelves.”
However, Fisher is confident that UK supply chains will rise to the challenge during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The extreme pressures on grocery, medical and pharmaceutical supply chains are unprecedented in modern times. But despite the challenges faced by supermarkets and pharmacies, with on-going peaks and surges in demand, the supply chains of our leading grocers are performing remarkably well, keeping high street and edge of town stores supplied.”
However, he acknowledges that the sharp spike in online grocery shopping has challenged current home-delivery models. The UK’s largest online grocer, Ocado, is one supermarket which has shed light on the huge volume of orders being placed: “Practically every Ocado customer, no matter how infrequently they may have shopped previously, is now looking to place an order every week. At the same time, with families at home, the average size of orders has almost doubled. This means there is an unceasing level of demand several times our current delivery capacity.”
Fisher adds: “What’s interesting is, some online grocery retailers are performing better than others – although long lead times of up to several weeks on delivery slots are not uncommon. Here, the focus is on order picking and assembling huge volumes of complex orders quickly. If, as a result of the crisis, homeworking becomes more widely adopted, it’s likely that more people will be placing orders online in the future and this may well mean that grocers and other e-commerce businesses will be looking for more sophisticated levels of goods-to-person automation,” he says.
IMHX 2021 is at the NEC Birmingham from 14 – 16 September 2021.
