Manchester, UK: Chilled food and drink distributor, NFT formally opens its £2m flagship depot in the North West tomorrow.
NFT's new Middleton warehouse: throughput is 45% and set to rise to 85% by March next year
Ten retail and manufacturing customers including Asda, Mathew Walker, Taylors of Harrogate and Orkney Herring already use the depot in Middleton, Greater Manchester.
NFT’s Middleton depot replaces its existing nearby Whitefield depot which required investment but had limited room for expansion. The new warehouse expands capability in that region for NFT by about 60%. Current throughput at the depot is 45% and is expected to rise to 85% by March next year.
The new depot, which acts as a logistics gateway for Ireland, will provide new shared-user capacity “enabling up to 50% growth uplift in the region and will significantly strengthen NFT both operationally and financially when fully commissioned,” the company says.
“Customer centricity is at the heart of the depot’s development. The key has been a World-class infrastructure enabling real-time information for customers, facilitating better supply chain decisions. Applications like Red Prairie, together with an innovative EDI platform provide integrity to NFT’s competitive advantage,” says the comany.
David Frankish, chief executive, NFT, says, “We had a vision for the future which included a state-of-the-art warehouse encompassing energy efficiency, cross-docking and multi-user flexibility which is all now a reality.
“With over £20m invested in the business in the last 4 years, this new Middleton development is a significant step forward in our aggressive growth plans and will contribute further to our strong financial position”.
NFT has a 10-year lease on the Middleton site. The new depot has 6,500sq metres of chill warehouse and can trans-ship 20,000 pallets a week and store 1,200 pallets.
