Steve Winwood, Culina Logistics CEO was presented with the award for Temperature Controlled Storage Operator of the Year by FSDF Chief Executive – Chris Sturman.

“This is a proud day for Culina Logistics,” said Steve, “It is real testimony to the commitment and hard work of our staff at all levels to excel in everything that they do to provide on-going service excellence for all our clients.”

Against strong nominations from leading competitors in the chilled logistics sector, Culina Logistics collected the award at a prestigious ceremony at the Manchester’s iconic Midland Hotel.

Humans have relied on bees to help cultivate their crops for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians would transport their hives up and down the Nile to pollinate their farm land. They were such a big part of the culture that the Egyptians would bury their loved ones with pots of honey in order to ‘sweeten’ the afterlife.

If honey bees who are the most productive and efficient of all of the pollinators (143 items pollinated), were to disappear overnight the knock on effect to the planet would be monumental. Without bees our everyday food choices would be a thing of the past. The majority of our fresh fruits and vegetables would be no more along with our beef and dairy products. This in turn would have an adverse effect on our diets and overall nutrition, leading to health problems and famine.

The essence of logistics is the movement of a product from its source by any means to an end user or consumer. Without this staple of industry, it’s not just food that would be unobtainable, it’s pretty much everything. There would be no new electronics, clothes, fuel or even transport. Everything that we have, use or need has been in the logistics chain at some point. Whether it has come from your local farm shop or from the other side of the world by plane or boat. Did you know that 60% of the UK’s food is imported by road, sea or air every day? It makes you realise just how much the logistics industry does to provide everything we take for granted on a daily basis.

Bees are one of the hardest working creatures on the planet and to logistics is certainly one of the hardest working professions. They are rarely thanked and often taken for granted but I think that we can all agree that the world would be a different place without either of them. I dread to imagine a world without either of them!

If you need a hard-working logistics provider whether it be ambient, chilled or third party transportation contact Culina Group to see how our ‘colony’ can benefit your business.

The FTAvision Compliance Award is presented to the Culina site that has, over a complete calendar year, kept their EU driver’s hours and working time rule infringements to a minimum when matched against other Culina sites.

To win this award three years running shows the fantastic attitude the Milton Keynes team have towards compliance. The drivers understand what is expected from them and are committed to keeping infringements as low as possible.

“It’s great to see the Transport Team at Milton Keynes setting a very high standard and showing a concerted effort to ensure repeat infringements are kept to a minimum.” Said Mick McCarron, Transport Director.

Culina Logistics Milton Keynes has a robust procedure in place where they monitor closely any driver infringements. They look to re-train at the earliest opportunity so that a driver who may be weak in a certain area can be brought up to speed quickly. This sets an excellent training standard and following re-training drivers very often do not repeat the infringement that they made previously.

All Culina Logistics (Chilled) and ex Culina Ambient sites had their 2016 tachograph data processed by the FTA (freight Transport Association). The FTA were looking at infringements, number of re-offenders, utilising the FTAvision system to de-brief drivers correctly, a percentage comparison against Culina sites and industry sector average.

Congratulations to the Milton Keynes team. This is a team effort and everyone involved was instrumental in this achievement.

New long term contracts, secured between two and five years, totalling over £130 million and a commitment to a massive £38 million investment in new Chilled logistics infrastructure are a defining statement of intent by the Chilled Food and Drink logistics market leader.

“Now that our colleagues at Great Bear Distribution are fully responsible for the management and growth of their specialist arena – Ambient, we at Culina Logistics are applying a laser focus on development of our Chilled Food and Drinks logistics sector, our own long term core area of logistics expertise,” said Culina Logistics CEO – Steve Winwood.

“The acquisition of Great Bear Distribution has bedded in superbly well, and we have now completely transferred over all our ambient logistics responsibilities. This year we are establishing the footprint for the further evolution of Culina Logistics as the specialist chilled logistics arm of the Culina Group, and 2017 is already promising to be our most exciting year yet.”

The majority of the new contracts are with blue chip FMCG giants actively working in partnership with Culina Logistics; with Culina Logistics mostly acting as the clients’ total UK warehousing and distribution function.

“We have recently been awarded new long term contracts with chilled food and drink manufacturers including Pepsico, Mondelez, Emmi, Jack Links (Peperami), Friesland Campina, General Mills, Nestle, and two very significant own label juice manufacturers,” said Steve Winwood.

“These contracts within the Culina Logistics chilled multi-user operations, range in length from two years to five years and will be generating secured revenue in excess of £130million.”

Culina Logistics already has an extensive UK network of seven specialist chilled logistics distribution centres, however network expansion is necessary to ensure the required capacity to accept the volume of projected growth.

As a result the company are also investing over £38 million in new specialist infrastructure to provide the capacity needed for its planned programme of Chilled logistics expansion over the coming years.

The establishment of a Chilled multi-user logistics “Super Centre” is currently in the final stages of completion.

“Our new Culina Logistics “Super Centre”, planned to be operational by mid-2018, is going to be the largest multi user chilled logistics warehousing and distribution facility in the UK,” said Steve Winwood.

“It will be a real showcase site for Culina Logistics. It’s going to be a high specification state of the art facility located in the heart of the UK. We will be establishing a unique facility at a location optimised for both UK and European chilled food and drink production with a key emphasis on retaining the quality and market leading service levels Culina Logistics is renowned for in the market place.”

Culina Logistics provides complete coverage of the UK storing over 100,000 pallet spaces within the current chilled multi-user network, with a massive 1.5million cases of chilled food and drink products delivered daily. Culina Logistics provides ‘day one for day one’ picking capability, and offers clients total supply chain solutions (including in-house contract packing) or integrated transport-only services.

It’s clear that 2017 is going to be another landmark year of spectacular growth and success as the momentum of expansion of the Culina Group powerfully rolls on.

This move by Culina ensures that clients have the guarantee that their product temperature will be maintained in the event of a power outage.

“This is a significant contingency investment by Culina to ensure that we are not compromised whilst client products are in our care”, said David Lowe, Culina Commercial Director.

“We want to be completely confident that in the event of a power failure our client’s products are protected. Especially when considering the ever growing strain on the UK power network. We at Culina are proud of the market leading service that we provide to our clients and its investments such as this that really differentiates us as a business”

The Himoinsa HTW-1390 T5 “heavy range” diesel generator container is powered by Mitsubishi and will be based initially at Culina Market Drayton.
Culina Group currently has 17 strategically located sites across the UK and Ireland, providing 3 million sq. ft. of warehousing space, while it also operates a fleet of 350 trucks and 650 trailers.

Culina employs over 3,000 people and has an enviable client list containing nearly 200 brands and manufacturers, many of which are household names.