Al Yasra Foods also successfully manages its own Private Label and licensed brands which together with the brands they distribute complete the product offering. To complement its market presence with direct access to households across the country, Al Yasra operates a unique retail showroom and home delivery network ‘Talabia’ throughout Kuwait.
Al Yasra approached LPC International (LPC) to help them with the next phase of their development. Al Yasra had outgrown their existing warehouse, and was using temporary stores and third party facilities to operate from.
Following a review of their operations, the advice from LPC was to look at a single new multi temperature distribution centre where all the storage and distribution activities could be centralised. This would enable an improved service to customers to be delivered and the cold chain to be better maintained.
It was also recognised that there was an opportunity with a single new facility to improve internal processes and increase productivity.
When a site had been obtained by Al Yasra LPC undertook a detailed design study to optimise the use of the footprint and the storage cube and size the requirement for each of the temperature regimes, these being for frozen, chill and ambient product. All the other requirements such as the marshalling areas, offices, amenities and ancillary areas were sized and designed by LPC and supported with individual building discipline specifications to enable the client to tender individual aspects of the facility to the market.
In addition LPC specified the storage systems and mechanical handling equipment (MHE) taking into account the stockholding requirements to service customer demands. The fast moving lines with large batch sizes were to be blockstacked, with medium lines going into double deep pallet racking and the slow lines into standard pallet racking. Performance related specifications were then developed for the logistics related equipment such as racking, MHE, dock levellers and doors to enable Al Yasra to go out to tender for the procurement of these items as well.
Following the finalisation of the design, the resource requirements i.e labour and equipment numbers were determined along with the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that could be expected in the operation.
