£100m-worth of contracts for Wincanton

Wincanton has secured a long-term contract renewal and a further extension of its 13-year partnership with food giant HJ Heinz and also been awarded a new three-year contract by electrical and electronic goods supplier Panasonic to manage its nationwide outbound transport from its National Distribution Centre in Northampton. The three-year extension of the transport contract and the four-year extension of the warehousing contract with HJ Heinz confirms, says Wincanton, its position as the primary national supplier of warehousing and transportation services for all of the HJ Heinz brands including HP and Amoy. Under the contract, Wincanton will continue to manage both HJ Heinz’s dedicated 350,000 sq ft automated warehouse, a co-packing operation which processes over eight million cases a year and a networked transport fleet. Under the new contract with Panasonic, the haulage and warehousing specialist will manage the UK distribution of Panasonic goods to retailers using its wider transport network. This contract win follows a project to maximise backhauling opportunities through the services of a dedicated Wincanton transport manager based within the customer’s supply chain team. For both customers, Wincanton said it had consistently generated efficiencies in transport and optimised the utilisation of their fleets by leveraging its extended national network. This has reduced reliance on sub-contractors and increased backhaul opportunities. The regional load planning teams optimise the sharing of vehicle capacity with other Wincanton customers such as GSK, Britvic, Unilever and Adidas.