Operating Review
Availability
Our product availability is now the best it has been for many years. We have reorganised our depot network so that we can continue to improve the service to our stores. In line with our increase in sales, our depots now handle over a million more cases each week than in the previous year. Improved efficiencies have also reduced the cost per case and we now deliver an additional 50 million cases for the same costs achieved in the previous year.
We are opening a new distribution centre in Northampton later this year. This is an important step in ensuring we have enough capacity to match our growth expectations. This will create 750 new jobs. The depot will initially provide additional capacity this Christmas and will be fully operational by the middle of next year. Another sign of our increased sales performance is the extension of our Langlands depot in East Kilbride and a reconfiguration of our depot at Waltham Point in Hertfordshire will improve the capacity and reliability of the depot.
