Europa Worldwide Group is the UK’s largest independent logistics provider, with three divisions in Europa Road, Europa Air & Sea and Europa Warehouse. The Group employs more than 1,400 people across 29 international sites in the UK and Republic of Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Hong Kong, China, India and the UAE. As an award-winning, multimodal operator Europa has been featured in The Sunday Times Track 250 for three years running.
Dionne Redpath, Group Chief Operating Officer and Warehouse Division Director at Europa Worldwide Group speaks to Warehouse & Logistics News.
How would you describe Europa Worldwide Group’s culture?
In my role, I have the pleasure of regularly introducing Europa to new people – be they potential customers, external agencies, or new recruits – and I believe that our culture is one of our core strengths. If you visit any of our sites, or interact with any of our team, you will experience deeply knowledgeable, customer-focused people, who are great communicators, easy to work with and passionate about logistics.
Across all our divisions, sites and countries, the Group believes in the power of our people, ensuring that everyone is highly engaged, motivated and positively contributing to company culture and customer satisfaction. At the core of the business, are 11 unique Europa values – each designed to establish and recognise those behaviours that make the biggest difference to our customers and to the success of our team.
How does this culture assist in you fulfilling your 3PL customers’ requirements?
In today’s commercial environment, our 3PL customers must constantly evolve to meet the demands of their customers and we believe that we play a fundamental role in helping them to do that. Our customers’ business is our business – we work hard to understand how we can optimise operations to power their growth. Delivering goods on time, at the right cost and in perfect condition is just the start. Cleverly controlling stock and returns, responding effortlessly to peaks and troughs in demand, and constantly driving efficiencies are increasingly important and our culture ensures these principals are at the forefront of our business.
Tell us how Europa Worldwide Group is growing in the UK and how this is influencing the development of Europa Warehouse.
Europa Worldwide has come a long way since our acquisition by CEO Andrew Baxter in 2013. At that time, we were a £73M turnover business, employing 400 people across 9 UK locations. A decade later, we are a £300M+ business, employing 1400 people across 30 global locations.
Incredibly, it was Europa’s response to Brexit that fuelled our most significant growth. We were the first company to create a DDP solution for customers shipping between the UK and EU and this allowed us to increase our market share. In 2023, we expanded this service – Europa Flow – to Belgium and the Netherlands and strengthened it in the UK with a Money Back Guarantee. This growth has enabled us to invest in all parts of the business. Europa Road now has 17 branch locations in its domestic network as well as dedicated branches in Belgium and the Netherlands. Europa Air & Sea has also expanded, growing to a team of more than 100 people and establishing local offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Dubai and Delhi.
As well as increasing our global footprint, we continue to diversify and invest in our 3PL services here in the UK. The most recent has been the completion of Europa Warehouse’s 3PL facility in Corby. This 100,000-pallet facility joined our established warehouses in Dartford and Birmingham – creating greater capacity for high quality storage, warehouse fulfilment and value-add services. Corby also houses a cutting-edge shared user automation system, enabling customers to cut their fulfilment costs and transform pick accuracy.
Why is it that Europa Warehouse moved into the world of automation?
The need to respond quickly to peaks and troughs in demand means that you are constantly altering your labour needs – this causes operational challenges and can result in unprecedented extra costs. Listening to the pain points of our customers, we identified the need for this type of technology in future-proofing our operations.
Since incorporating automation, peak is absolutely not a thing – it’s business as usual.
How future-proofed and flexible are your 3PL solutions?
Since installing the shared-user automation system, we have unlocked benefits for our customers like increased speed of order processing, improved operational efficiencies and picking accuracies of 100 per cent.
Collectively, these benefits offer customers the ability to scale up and down with ease (in line with seasonal peaks), while providing the necessary space for them to grow their own business portfolios.
Across both the automated and manual processes at Europa Warehouse, we adopt a collaborative approach with our customers to identify the most cost effective, efficient and flexible logistics solutions for them.
Every customer is different, so it’s up to us to help them find the right solution which will help them scale up.
What makes Europa Warehouse unique in the industry?
It’s quite unique for a business of our size and scale to have invested in something quite so technologically advanced, as is this shared-user system. While a larger 3PL facility might have been using automation in their warehouse for some time, Europa’s shared-user system gives businesses with volatile order profiles the opportunity to scale up and down at ease without having to tie themselves into a sizable capital investment.
How can your 3PL solutions help?
Our warehouse portfolio provides over a million sq. ft. of dedicated warehouse and logistics space. Our teams offer both manual and automated order fulfilment with comprehensive solutions to optimise the supply chain, ensuring seamless operations and timely deliveries. Another solution – which massively helps our customers better manage tight cashflows – is that we hold HMRC wet and dry bond accreditation across all sites, allowing customers to defer paying their customs duties on their goods, including alcohol, until they are dispatched from the warehouse.
What sectors do your warehouse customers operate in?
Our facilities cater to a variety of industries in e-commerce, retail, manufacturing, industrial goods and wholesale – from drinks and fashion to packaging and cosmetics.
Our automation system operates using ‘totes’, or crates, which can take a higher-than-average weight limit to be stored and transported across the warehouse for picking and packing. Whether it be 24 bottles of wine in the weighing up to 35kg or small components like cosmetics or electronics, if a business has a ‘totable’ produce, they can access the system.
How have customers responded to your solutions?
We’ve had great feedback from customers working with us at Europa Warehouse. Not only can they retain loyalty from the end consumer – which drives their growth strategies – they also receive fewer complaints, which is great for their reputation. It’s costly for business to put returns back into resaleable stock, so ultimately, it’s this quality of service that is desired above all else.
What are the biggest opportunities for Europa Warehouse?
Our ambition is to extend our services in the UK – both for manual and automated lines – and plan to add a new building to our portfolio every two to three years.
The logistics sector is extremely dynamic, fast-paced and ever-evolving. Therefore, it’s incredibly important for us to adapt and innovate our products and services to meet the present and future needs of our customers.
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