Whitbread opens warehouse in Germany to support expansion plans
Whitbread is announcing it has opened its first warehouse in Haiger, Germany as part of a long-term solution to support Premier Inn’s exciting growth plans.
Whitbread have already seen that it is delivering benefits to their business and are secure in the knowledge that their key products are in Germany and not being delayed on motorways and ports, along with many other products such as ground floor furniture and linen trollies.
This set up provides them with centralised storage and quicker deliveries to hotels when required, ensures availability of key products during very challenging times, and also reduces delivery costs by optimising deliveries to multiple locations.
Once the post-Brexit environment has been navigated, the focus will remain on delivering a great service for acquisitions and new-builds, whilst also developing a more strategic warehousing solution that opens up multiple supply routes to maximise its’ service capability.
Whitbread has a Force for Good commitment to reduce their carbon emissions by 50% by 2025, with the delivery optimisation from this project contributing to this.
Whitbread will continue to reduce their transport emissions by reducing the number of deliveries made: consolidating suppliers’ orders into one delivery to the warehouse and consolidating multiple suppliers’ goods into one delivery to the hotels.This has been a truly cross functional effort and will continue to be as the warehouse becomes integral for the growth and maintenance of the German estate.
Whitbread have steadily started stocking the warehouse with key products, to-date they have:
- 8 live suppliers
- 13 inbound deliveries
- 7 outbound deliveries
They’re next focus is on building the back office financial and tax processes to support the next phases of the project which will see the implementation of key lines of replenishment stock and the capability to accept inbound deliveries from internationally sourced products.
