Cover Story
Menzies Distribution Consolidation
IS MENZIES IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL?
FAST FACTS
Menzies distribution in numbers Q 29,500 retail customers in the UK & Ireland (6,500 in Scotland)
Q 7.4 million papers and magazines delivered every day
Q 207,000 deliveries a week using 2,000 delivery routes
Q 1,750 delivery vehicles travelling 123,000 miles each day
Q 3,300 magazines titles and 630 newspaper titles
Q Customer Service Centres receive an average 50,000 calls each week
With Menzies closing its Cambuslang ‘superhub’ last month (within a decade of opening it), local retailers are beginning to question whether the monopolistic distributor should be working harder with them to secure the long term future of the news and magazine trade in Scotland.
BY ANTONY BEGLEY
M 14 SLR | JUNE 2012
enzies Distribution has never had it easy from retailers in Scotland, often accused of exploiting its
monopolistic position and failing to work hard enough on the ground with the trade. Whether those accusations are fair or not is a common topic of debate for the company’s 6,500 Scottish customers but one thing is for sure: the intensity of that debate has been ratcheted up a notch or two by the closure last month of the mammoth Cambuslang depot, one of Menzies’ two Scottish ‘superhubs’.
The majority of the work previously carried out at Cambuslang has now been shifted 15 or so miles west to Linwood, the other superhub, which has implications for many retailers in
the central belt and beyond [see panel on right for details].
The closure was announced months ago to widespread consternation, particularly as Cambuslang and Linwood were only opened in 2001 and 2002 respectively. What has gone so badly wrong in under a decade? One the face it, the ‘consolidation’, as
Menzies euphemistically refers to it, seems to make sense in a world of general economic gloom and declining newspaper and magazine sales. What angers retailers, however, is the apparent lack of enthusiasm shown by Menzies in attempting to reverse this trend, or at least work with retailers to slow the decline as much as possible. One such disgruntled retailer is news specialist Des Barr, who operates one of Scotland’s biggest home news delivery
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