British Corner Shop opens new distribution centre in the Netherlands
Online grocer British Corner Shop has opened a new distribution centre in Wijchen in the Netherlands.
The facility is the first of its kind for the Bristol-based business and will be fully dedicated to exporting British Corner shop products.
Double the size of the company’s previous warehouse, it will enable the company to stock more products and hire its own employees as it looks to ensure a higher quality of packing and stocking management and have better oversight of orders.
British Corner Shop has seen its turnover drop by 40% in the European market since Brexit. However, the company said the move to a fully dedicated European warehouse will enable to it return to giving customers uncompromised service, free of supply chain and cross border compliance delays.
The company currently has 2,000 products from UK brands available to EU destinations. With the new supply chain in place, British Corner Shop is now planning to expand its range of brands and increase the number of products to over 5,000. This will also involve expanding the Marks & Spencer product range, including chilled, fresh and bakery, and adding new categories including alcohol and organic ranges.
Jon Farrar, head of marketing at British Corner Shop, said: “For British Corner Shop our customer base in Europe has, and continues to be, of great importance to us. Brexit changed the way we serve our customers, adding complexity in both the physical movement of goods and compliance in terms of the cross-border trade between the UK and Europe.
“With our new integrated, warehousing and supply chain operations based in the Netherlands, we have welcomed our first cohort of local employees and are dispatching orders for next day delivery across Europe successfully. The initial customer feedback has been extremely positive.
“We feel positive that the challenges brought about by Brexit are behind us, and that we are moving forward now in way that is significantly better than before for our European customers.”
