2014 was a good year for the loading bay industry as retailers, in particular, spent heavily on their big shed networks but how will they fare this year and the next few as the retailers cancel their plans for big store openings and close others to safeguard their profits against the rise of the discounters and changes in the publics’ shopping habits? And what should the loading bay suppliers do to promote their sales in what could become a sticky market as they jostle to get a share of the non-food retailer market which is still holding up reasonably well?
The upheaval in food retailing is serious, with some executives and analysts believing that Tesco, Sainsbury and Morrisons will need to close one in five stores to protect their profits. Others, like M&S, have abandoned their plans to open a 1 million ft2 DC at London Gateway’s container port, owing to constraints from falling sales in their general merchandise sector.
One obvious reaction for loading bay suppliers is to hone their services to meet the remorseless rise in e-commerce, and apart from their product innovations to meet that rise, they will undoubtedly try harder to push their maintenance support services which will cut the risk of breakdowns and the consequent knock-on effect of delayed customer deliveries. Online shoppers are no longer prepared to wait much more than 24 hours for their ordered goods so any disappointment in that area risks permanent loss of business because, even if it is the postal carrier’s fault, it will be the retailer that is blamed. Fortunately for the loading bay suppliers, the message on maintenance is getting across to the buyers. Hormann, for example, saw a significant growth in its maintenance support services, having won new contracts to maintain doors and other loading bay equipment, including competitors’ makes, and that includes 24/7 support. That is how it should be because equipment breakdowns are anathema to the fast-moving e-commerce market.
Another three issues loading bay suppliers must try harder on are safety, sustainability and energy. Despite all the safety equipment advances the loading bay still accounts for over 25% of all workplace accidents and these accidents can seriously delay despatches. The key to reversing this unenviable record is training, which should not be restricted to forklift drivers, and it should be part of induction training. On the safety hardware side, controls and barriers can reduce risks by segregating pedestrians and trucks. Further up the cost scale are the various devices to prevent premature lorry departure and vehicle creep. All of the leading loading bay equipment suppliers are a useful source of information on loading bay safety and then there are the forklift training specialists like Mentor and institutions such as the FLTA and SEMA.
The leading kit suppliers have developed products and software to help warehouse operators to reduce their carbon footprint and the energy saving advice is usually free and downloadable. The more prescient kit suppliers, however, will and must continue to make sustainability their main focus on carbon reduction if they wish to flourish through what could be that ancient Chinese curse of “May you live through interesting times.”
On a more optimistic note, e-commerce has a lot more upheaval in store for conventional bricks and mortar retailers which could see vast, new, shared-user order picking warehouses developed and financed by leading goods producers, particularly in the food and household consumer fields. This would allow them to disintermediate the conventional retailers and so remove a vast amount of unnecessary costs and profit margins and wrest back control from over mighty retailers whose record of dealings with their suppliers is often ignoble.
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