Since 2019, Yorkshire Tea – a brand launched in the 1970s – has been the UK’s top-selling traditional black tea, with 28% of the market. The company, Taylors of Harrogate, claims to “do things properly”, not cutting corners in the pursuit of a “proper brew”. So it was an honour to visit the fragrant and highly-secure warehouse where PD Ports, their third-party logistics supplier, store thousands of sacks of precious tea leaves, imported from all over the world. Teesport is the fifth largest port in the UK. Handling 28 million tonnes per year – both exports and imports – it supports 22,000 jobs and contributes £1.4 billion to the UK economy each year. No wonder Taylors of Harrogate switched their traffic from Felixstowe some years ago, to this more local import terminal.
20 miles inland at Newton Aycliffe, Stiller Warehousing & Distribution has two sites where they store engineering parts and fulfil orders for the manufacture of trains, as well as assembling specialist respiratory masks in a purpose-built co-packing facility. It was heart-warming to learn about their ‘in kind’ fulfilment of Baby Box orders too, for local charity The Children’s Foundation and to hand over a cheque to the charity’s CEO, Sean Soulsby, for a very generous donation from Stiller, topped up with £80 from the UK Warehousing Association to recognise our 80th year.
The community spirit doesn’t end there: Stiller recently hosted over 100 local teenagers for a taste of what a logistics career might entail.
And in Consett, local family firm Elddis Transport stores everything from popcorn to gluten-free biscuits. They have used their expanding warehouse facilities to do more for their pallet network and won new business with local companies. Inspiration can be found here too, as solar panels have recently been retrofitted on the warehouse roof, which will allow Elddis to switch their warehouse operations away from fossil-fuel powered gas trucks to battery-operated MHE.
March’s tour of North Yorkshire and County Durham covered warehouse visits 16, 17 & 18 of the eighty I will be making this year, celebrating UKWA’s 80th anniversary year. So far I have been joined by countless logistics professionals as well as a Mayor, a Councillor and a couple of MPs, but at PD Ports I finally met a true celebrity. Driver Kev has starred in the Yorkshire Tea advert!
I left the North-East with the distinct impression it’s not just a traditional cuppa that they do well. This region can be proud of its proper warehousing too.
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