Iceland has opened its £100m distribution hub in Warrington – and its CEO says he's proud to have made such a big investment in his home town.
The supermarket giant's largest 海角视频 distribution hub sits on the Omega logistics hub just off the M62, and boasts a freezer the size of a warehouse and a fleet of electric-powered forklifts for its 750-strong workforce.
BusinessLive got a tour with the company’s chief executive Tarsem Dhaliwal, who was there to officially declare it open. The site is already operational, with most staff having moved across from the company's older depot elsewhere in Warrington.
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The Iceland group has almost 1,000 stores across the country. Some 190 of those stores are Food Warehouse out-of-town superstores. The Warrington depot will deliver to more than 350 of Iceland’s stores – including those in the North, the north Midlands, and North Wales.
The warehouse stores pallets full of all the goods sold at Iceland stores, including frozen food, chilled food, and then “ambient” goods sold in store from bottles of pop to bread.
When an Iceland store needs to be restocked, warehouse staff on electric forklifts whiz round the warehouse gathering all the supplies. As we walked past the distribution bays at the side of the warehouse, we could see hundreds of shrink-wrapped pallets all labelled with the names of stores across the 海角视频.
Tarsem said: “It's massive for us. The whole investment in this site was 100 million quid and it's probably the first depot we've built from scratch.
“It was massively important to me because I'm a local lad… I was bought up in Warrington.
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“We had options to go somewhere else. There always are options because people and organisations like councils will throw money at you. For me it was hugely important that we stay in Warrington, preserving the jobs that we have and growing more jobs within the Warrington area, which I think we've done.
“And we will grow more jobs as we put more volume and more stores through this depot.”
The site is run by logistics giant GXO. That company has a long partnership with Iceland across the country, and its logo is all over the site, but Tarsem says it’s very definitely an Iceland warehouse.
He said: “This is us. This is what we've done. We've made this happen. So even though GXO signs are everywhere, it's my bloody depot!”
Gavin Williams, managing director 海角视频 and Ireland at GXO, said the warehouse was absolutely “critical” for Iceland. And he said: The new Warrington regional distribution centre is great news for the local community and for our colleagues, who will help us assist Iceland’s growth plans across the country.”
The warehouse is split into three sections. One is for ambient food, where we walked past dozens of pallets of drinks like Pepsi Max and Irn Bru. Then there’s the chilled warehouse, kept at 5 degrees celsius, where forklifts carrying pallets of eggs whizzed past.
Then the frozen foods warehouse is kept at a bone-chilling minus 19 degrees celsius. It’s just as big as a normal warehouse, with forklifts bustling about, but has ice on its insulated walls, just like a domestic freezer.
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When BusinessLive and fellow visitors went into the frozen warehouse, Tarsem put his head in but quickly jumped out again with a smile, leaving the rest of us to the tour and to experience just how cold a giant freezer is.
Later he smiled: “I have been in cold rooms for a long time, both in stores and in here, so I know what a cold room does. It's cold! I know it operates so I thought, no. I'll let you guys do it.”
It’s definitely a chilly room without warm clothes. But those who do wrap up and go to work in the frozen room do enjoy it, according to Gavin. “Especially as the temperature gets warmer through the summer, people tend to favour going to work in the chilled warehouse and the freezer more than they do the ambient.”
Iceland is best known for its frozen food. That inspired its name, and features in most of its advertising. But Iceland’s stories are about much more than that.
Tarsem said: “37% of what we sell is frozen, about 32% ish is ambient, and the balance is chilled. People say, ‘why don't you just sell frozen food?’ Well, we'll be out of business, because people expect to buy what they do!”
Tarsem said all Iceland stores were different, with some especially in London focusing more on everyday groceries and with others focusing more on freezers.
But he added: “Frozen food is all we talk about when we advertise with you guys, 100%. Because that's the reason why you come in. And when you come in, you think ‘they sell bread, they sell milk, they sell brownies… so then people just top up.”
One of the less glamorous but most important parts of the site is the baler room, where piles of cardboard and plastic packaging are compacted into bales that can be sent for recycling.
Michael Millar, site manager of the Warrington depot, called the baler room “the beating heart of the site”. If the baler stoops for long, operations at the whole warehouse slow down until the packaging backlog is cleared.
Soon, a second baler will move to the new depot from the old Warrington site, finally completing the site move. That will allow the site to compress cardboard packaging 24/7, while the other compactor will switch between plastic and cardboard.