Alpine Gateway to El? million
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• A £17 million, 30-month, frozen food distribution deal has been agreed between National Freight Consortium's newly-formed Alpine subsidiary and Gateway Foodmarkets which recently acquired Fine Fare.
Under the terms of the deal, Alpine will purchase all the frozen food stock on behalf of Gateway and will be responsible for settling the invoices from more than 90 suppliers.
Alpine will distribute around 600 frozen food lines to 1,000 Gateway outlets throughout England and Wales.
Barry Norris, Gateway's distribution director: "We are predicting up to a 10% improvement in sales performance with this centralisation. This will be achieved through more efficient delivery and improved product availability."
Alpine will use three depots, each with 14,000m3 of cold store space dedicated to Gateway. Up to 180 jobs will be created at Dronfield, near Sheffield, Yate near Bristol and Elstree in Hertfordshire, including around 60 new driving jobs.
All stock movements will be controlled by computers. Hand held data capture terminals in each store will automatically alert the local Alpine depot when more stock is needed.
Alpine will use around 80 vehicles for the contract, including three new 16-tonne Leyland Freighters with a Chinese six axle configuration. A number of refrigerated vehicles currently on hire to Alpine will be used at first but these are likely to be replaced by vehicles purchased for the contract.