TPN hub capacity doubles to 10,000
It’s not just how many pallets you carry in one year, it’s how well you lay the foundations for the future, says network chairman as he more than doubles hub capacity.
The Pallet Network signed a five-year lease with ProLogis on a brand new hub this week. TPN chairman Richard Eldred says the prestige warehouse just off J1 M6 near Rugby covers 22,000sq m and is more than twice the size of the present hub near Leicester. Minor modifications are to be made to allow more ground-level access and TPN will start using the new site from January 4, 2005. Capacity will be 10,000 pallets on a night shift, he says. It’s more than what TPN envisaged when it first started looking for a hub more than a year ago “but in the past year the business has moved and so have its ambitions and expectations”, he says. ProLogis will originally have had in mind a different type of client – TPN has no use for the dock levellers and the other tenants in the three-warehouse development are GAP and Pearson Education. But the deal was done quickly in the end and ProLogis was refreshingly good to deal with, he says. The lease terms are “fair, reasonable and affordable”, Eldred says. TPN will take on new members for the first time in more than a year and some existing members will increase their throughput. The network is near capacity now, at 4,000 pallets a night from its 72 members. It’s good for the whole network industry, to be moving into such a development. “I was delighted, for example, when Pall-Ex moved into its new hub,” he says. The New Year will be an ideal time to make the change. The timing, and securing the new hub, is a “a touch of luck, and a bit of skill,” he says. News of the new hub was communicated to staff – many of whom are expected to move with the company – and network members this week.
