Nestle UK rail project will make wagons work harder

Nestle UK supply chain director Chris Tyas said the issue had dogged rail freight for some time, limiting the food industry’s progress in shifting from road to rail use.

“We are doing work looking at increasing the height of wagons,”​ said Tyas. However, he said there were restrictions on increasing the height of wagons on the standard bogeys that supported them, so Nestlé UK was instead concentrating on lowering the height of the bogeys. If this were to be done, the height of freight cars could still be boosted.

Savings​

He said the resultant savings in terms of petrol as a result of significant reductions in road journeys from fitting more products on to the wagons “will improve costs dramatically”.​ However, further studies were needed in order to quantify more precisely the potential cash that could be saved.

“The wagons are close to completion,”​ said Tyas, adding: “We are doing a lot of work to ​move product from road to rail. For instance, we have moved coffee which is processed at our Tetbury [Gloucestershire] factory to rail.​

​“We have seen a 12 per cent improvement in vehicle utilisation within our fleet in the past few years – the equivalent of removing 500,000 road miles.”​

Supply chain improvements​

Nestle UK, which makes brands such as Smarties and KitKat, has worked on several other improvements in supply chain efficiency recently. Two months ago the processor completed a £7m expansion of its automated ambient product facility in Bardon, Leicestershire, which is managed by Eddie Stobart, part of the Stobart Group.

The work consolidated warehousing and distribution, cutting empty vehicle runs and road miles. Initial plans to grow capacity at the site, which will handle up to 75 per cent of Nestlé UK deliveries and boasts a total capacity of 110,000 pallets, were reported in Food Manufacture in June 2007.