The core of any wholesaler is the quality of its physical operation. Smiths News has been investing heavily in improving the standards within the physical operation, including infrastructure, service levels and future innovation, to ensure we remain the market leading wholesaler deploying world-class solutions to meet the future service requirements of retailers and publishers.

Physical infrastructure

Smiths News continues to invest in its network of distribution centres, improving supply chain efficiencies and providing improved service to publishers and retailers.

We currently operate from depots all across England and Wales. Our future plans will see the number of depots consolidate further to ensure we are able to meet the needs of the changing market.

Magazine packing and deliveries

Smiths News invested £7.0m in a TWI packing solution for magazines, this consists of a semi automated picking operation where product is picked into Totes, and the system algorithm ensures optimised parcel production and increases accuracy in supplies and lowering claims and shortages to customers.

In response to the stock management challenges that the expansion in the scale of sales based replenishment brings, Smiths News has invested in the development and implementation of our Warehouse Management system designed to optimise internal stock movements and storage of goods. With over 400,000 copies being replenished each week across the business expert stock management is essential to maximise sales and availability.

We track all deliveries to retailers using scanning technology. Barcodes placed at retailer’s stores allow the scanning of actual delivery times at every retailer and provide an accurate view of the days distribution.

This investment enables the business to ensure titles reach retailers on the correct day of sale on 99.7% of occasions and in the correct quantity to an accuracy of 99.8%.

Returns processing

With the vast majority of supplies sent to retailers on sale or return fast and accurate processing of returns is critical for both the smooth commercial running of the supply chain and for fast sales data for future supply management. We collect unsolds from retailers at least 4 days per week.

To give Smiths News market leading capability in this area we invested £3.0m in developing Magscan, this technology enables a very high degree of accuracy and efficiency. The Magscan platform is built into the end-to-end operational process where returns collected from the retailers are automatically registered when processed through Magscan via the Tote and track solution.

Our returns processing operation is over 99.9% accurate ensuring fast reliable data for sales analysis and credit claims.