LWC opens doors to new £12.5m distribution site

By Lisa Riley

Published: 06 April, 2021

LWC Drinks has opened the doors to a new £12.5m state-of-the-art 173,000 square foot bonded distribution centre ahead of the re-opening of the hospitality industry on 12 April.

Based 10 miles from Manchester city centre in Oldham, the new site is twice the size of LWC’s previous Openshaw site, allowing the company’s growing distribution to “flow in and out seamlessly”, the independent drinks wholesaler said.

The opening marked a “monumental moment” in LWC’s journey, it added, as the business celebrated not just a “significant location move”, but also the move to a new state-of-the-art Warehouse Management System (WMS).

The WMS would help standardise operations at the new site, ensuring that they were “as efficient and effective as possible”, as well as providing improved inventory management and forecasting accuracy for the distribution teams on the ground, cutting-edge voice recognition technology, improved levels of service, and an improved customer experience, said LWC.

“Throughout the pandemic, our logistics teams in Manchester have been working incredibly hard – and with limited resource – to relocate the business from one site to another, and integrate our new WMS,” said MD Ebrahim Mukadam.

“It’s certainly not been an easy feat, but they’ve done an incredible job and I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing how these big changes are benefiting our customers over the coming months.

“In what has been an incredibly turbulent and difficult 12 months for our industry, we hope that this monumental step in LWC’s journey will provide some reassurance, optimism and hope not just our customers, but also the wider hospitality industry, demonstrating that we are confident and looking towards a brighter future,” he said.

LWC Drinks said it had now re-opened all of its depots to support customers looking to re-open in the next few weeks.

In September, LWC Drinks launched a full-service order and pay solution to help the hospitality industry "stay safely connected” with its customers during the pandemic.

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