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TRENDING
London’s Last Mile
The traditional supply chain
involves moving products from
suppliers through distribution
centres to retail stores, from
where the customers choose
their items and then transport
them from the store to their
homes. Business to consumer
delivery has until recently
been limited, with catalogues
providing the interface and
delivery times of up to a month
accepted as the norm by
the consumer.
Resourcing
this last
mile of the
supply chain
is one of
the greatest
challenges
to face the
logistics
industry
By Gordon
Reynolds,
Partner,
National Logistics
& Industrial
E
-commerce has completely changed this model. The
internet is increasingly the customer interface, with
the retailer’s role being one completing the customer’s
pick and delivering the item through the last mile of its
journey to the customer’s home, or another convenient
location. Importantly, all of this now happens within
hours, not months.
Resourcing this last mile of the supply chain is one of the
greatest challenges to face the logistics industry and is all
the more acute in major urban centres like London. High
population density creates significant demand. However,
there is acutely constrained land supply upon which to
develop new facilities to meet this growing need, and
competing land uses provide market constraints.
Whilst Amazon continues to grow its in-house final
mile delivery offering, the majority of retailers outsource
this process to parcel carriers such as DPD, Yodel and
Hermes. These operations need sites to be able to receive
goods, delivered by 40’ HGVs overnight and then move
them to smaller vehicles for onward dispatch to the
customer within the working day. The closer these parcel
hubs can be to the final delivery address, the more efficient
CUSHMAN & WAKEFIELD
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