Questers' Visit to Home Bargains Distribution Centre

On Tuesday 9th April in very wet weather 17 intrepid Questers arrived at the impressive Home Bargains Distribution Centre at Solstice Park near Amesbury. We were greeted by the young Human Resources Director who gave us a very interesting introduction to TJ Morris Ltd - the parent company which is the largest independent grocer in the UK, selling fresh and frozen foods as well as household goods. Over 30% of their lines are end-of-range branded goods bought in bulk from the original manufacturers.

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Headquartered in Liverpool and originally concentrated in Northern England, there are now nearly 600 Home Bargains stores around the country and in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The business is still privately owned and run, with three generations of the Morris family now in executive roles. The company does not advertise! Until 2015 all the distribution took place from Liverpool but due to the rapid expansion and success of the company the Amesbury centre was built to service the southern and western areas of the UK. The company is still growing rapidly and the Amesbury site has the capacity to deal with many additional stores as they come on stream. Currently they already service over 150 stores, from Penzance to Swansea to Great Yarmouth, with plans to grow this to 400 stores.

​After coffee we donned high visibility jackets for a fascinating tour led by a floor supervisor.
We were very impressed with the sophistication of the automated system of barcoded trolleys running on overhead rails which was designed, made and installed by a British company. Smaller items such as makeup, perfumes and DVDs are collected into baskets with packers being guided to the items required by headphones. These small boxes travel along roller tracks to meet up with the large trolleys in the loading bay. Each store receives ‘top up goods‘ daily and the lorries return with all the packing materials which are then crushed at Amesbury and dispatched to recycling centres. The volumes passing in and out of the 99 lorry loading bays are quite astonishing, for example they receive three articulated lorry loads of toilet rolls in to the warehouse every day! The Warehouse operates 24/7 and employs 750 staff.
 
We all enjoyed our visit which covered a mile of floor space and gave us an excellent overview of state of the art grocery distribution.
 
Jane Leishman