Consignia wins contract with Safeway
Post Office administrator Consignia has agreed a deal with Safeway to process all non-grocery goods returned by customers at its 447 stores and send them to their suppliers.
The Guardian
from PA News 25.2.02
Postal group Consignia has started a business helping high street retailers to process their returned goods, it announced today.
The company has agreed a deal with supermarket giant Safeway in which the postal service manages the returns of the retailer’s faulty or damaged goods. All “non-grocery” items that consumers return to the supermarket will be processed and returned to wholesalers and manufacturers by the Post Office.
The contract is part of Consignia’s drive to reposition itself within the market following the threat of increased competition to its postal services. The savings to Safeway supermarket are said to be “significant”.
A spokeswoman for Consignia said: “In trials a top high street retailer had 18-months worth of returns cleared in two weeks.
“Many companies have an enormous backlog of returns with huge volumes of goods sitting in warehouses. This poses capital and space issues and results in unnecessary costs.
“Research has shown that it is more cost effective to out source the returns to Consignia. It is the first service of its kind in Britain.”
The agreement follows a successful six-month trial in which the service was rolled out to all 447 Safeway stores around the country.
Consignia is offering a similar service to other retailers and several other high-street names are expected to announce their deals shortly.
The service is targeted at manufacturers, distributors, retailers and direct marketers of books, CDs, videos, DVDs and other consumer goods – all of which face the on-going challenge of managing their returns process effectively to reduce costs and release cash for investment.
Safeway’s Network Project Manager Ian Mayhew said: “Consignia’s new reverse service has already contributed to a number of cost and quality improvements.
“We now have an end solution which offers a best in class service to our customers, stores and suppliers.”
Paul Bateson, Consignia’s managing director for logistics solutions, said: “Securing one of the UK’s premier retailers as our first customer is a great endorsement of our reverse logistics solution.
“This service is a first for the UK and I am confident that it will have a major impact on the retail sector and lead to millions of pounds of savings each year.”
According to the Consignia spokeswoman, research figures indicate that any one company has between 15% and 40% of goods returned depending on the industry, and a study by KPMG showed that the publishing industry could save #100 million a year if it processed its returns more successfully.
