Summary
• Meyer Timber’s new Stoke-on-Trent depot covers 190 acres.
• With sister company Panel Co it has 650,000ft² of warehousing on the site.
• Redevelopment of the site will cost £3.5m.
• It will stock £4m of panel products, taking Meyer’s total to £16m.
• The company is aiming for £120m turnover in 2012.
Richard Lazenby feels like he’s been knitting smoke. Meyer Timber’s group trading director was reflecting on photographing a rank of new delivery trucks outside the colossal Stoke-on-Trent distribution hub the company has just moved into.
First the Staffordshire weather would not play ball. Thanks to the panel product specialist’s next-day delivery pledge on orders up to 5pm, it was also difficult to get the trucks in one place long enough.
“The new delivery offer means that they’re out at 6.15am, returning around 11am and then straight out again and not back until after 3pm,” said Mr Lazenby. “Combined with the weather and winter daylight hours, it’s given us a very narrow window to get the pictures we wanted!”
However, while snapping the right publicity shots has proved a headache, after Mr Lazenby runs through the other projects Meyer Timber has taken on in its seismic last 12 months, you get the feeling that he and his colleagues can’t be too fazed by mere smoke knitting.
When TTJ talked to Meyer about a year ago, it already seemed to have its hands full.
Its earlier acquisition by industrial holdings operation Hadleigh Partners from venture capital company Alchemy had triggered major developments at the business, then comprising Montague L Meyer (MLM), William T Eden and decorative panel and surfaces supplier Panel Co.
Single identity
Hadleigh, said Mr Lazenby at the time, was committed to investing in its acquisitions and “exploring commercial opportunities that require an entrepreneurial spirit”. Cue the integration, announced on January 1, 2011, of MLM and Eden into one operation, Meyer Timber.
Mr Lazenby said that the single identity made sense on multiple levels. MLM and Eden had become increasingly indistinguishable in customer base and product range, but continued to act independently in front-end commercial operations. The new Meyer Timber set about forging a unified sales structure across the business. A fully integrated nationwide logistics system was established, a new delivery fleet ordered and new logo and website created.
Mr Lazenby also revealed plans to expand and diversify Meyer Timber’s inventory, plus the start of a programme to relocate smaller branches into bigger, more efficient hubs.
In the first of these moves, the ex-Eden branches in Frindsbury and New Milton were heading respectively to a new 48,000ft² “Medway” site in Strood and the refurbished former MLM Southampton depot.
So early 2011, it looked like Meyer Timber already had plenty to digest. But while these developments don’t quite pale into insignificance compared with what’s happened since, they are heading that way.
“In fact, if we had another year like the last one, we’d have to lie down in a darkened room for a bit,” joked Mr Lazenby.
Among latest moves, the company relocated its 24,000ft² Corsham branch to a 53,000ft² depot in Chippenham. It has also improved facilities at Tilbury, its main import location.
Bigger hubs
But by far the most dramatic change has been the closure of Meyer’s former Birmingham HQ and Warrington depot and their relocation to the Stoke site. The move ties in with the strategy of focusing on bigger hubs capable of holding more comprehensive inventories. But Stoke takes it to a different level.
The best way to get an idea of the scale of the place is to drive around it. It covers 190 acres and has 1.2 million ft² of covered space. There’s even an old runway, which was used by cargo planes in the second world war when it was a munitions plant.
More recently, the site was home to appliance maker Creda, hence it also includes the factory social club’s nine-hole golf course.
The former Stoke base of Meyer Timber’s sister company Panel Co was just next door and when the Creda UK plant came on the market Hadleigh decided to take on the premises. The idea was for the two businesses to become anchor tenants, and for Hadleigh to redevelop other buildings for let.
£3.5m redevelopment
That plan is now coming together. A whole swathe of buildings was demolished to create a new ‘runway’ access area for trucks, and Meyer and Panel Co moved in during December. Since then, they’ve amassed stocks rapidly, with up to 35 artic loads arriving daily.
Between them, the two companies have 650,000ft² of covered space and offices, with options on a further 200,000ft². One single 250x36m warehouse bay alone could swallow the whole of the storage area at the old Birmingham HQ, which, Mr Lazenby stressed, has also been re-let. “We’re not leaving a trail of empty sheds behind,” he said.
Looking round Meyer Timber’s new home, it’s difficult to believe it’s only been in a couple of months. Besides the accumulating stocks, there are new firewalls and a major roof refurbishment has started. “We’ve also bought £500,000 of Stakapal racking so all loose boards can be stored off the ground,” said Mr Lazenby
The eventual cost of the refurb will be around £3.5m, but the efficiencies of such a large site have already enabled the company to achieve monthly sales there of £3m-plus, more than Warrington and Birmingham combined. When the fit-out is complete, it will hold up to £5.5m of stock, taking Meyer Timber’s national total to around £16m.
“And with 24-hour, three-shift working, which we’re planning to start in March, we can take Stoke’s sales to £4m a month,” said Mr Lazenby. “Combined with Panel Co, that would make it an £80m-a-year hub.”
Wider product range
While absorbing Stoke, Meyer has also pushed on with another element of its strategy: diversifying its product range. “We were too vanilla,” said Mr Lazenby. “So we’re introducing more market-specific and trending products, like timber frame, and furniture-specific OSB, Russian squares and more melamine and laminate ranges – with Egger’s new Zoom collection about to arrive. We’re also introducing Medite Tricoya Extreme Durable MDF.”
Last year, Mr Lazenby mentioned plans to take Meyer back into softwood too, but after a ‘ rethink this is off the agenda in the short term.
The culture shift that has gone ahead, however, has been the introduction of next-day delivery. “We first went to a 3pm cut-off last August, then announced in TTJ that we were going to 5pm from January, so were committed,” said Mr Lazenby. “Initially this requires additional investment, however, we’re confident that once we’ve impressed customers with the level of service, they’ll start to build it into the way they do business and manage their stock. And, as they enjoy the cash flow and stock level benefits of next-day delivery, we anticipate improved results.”
The response, he said, has already been positive. “Customers have even asked drivers to pass on how impressed they are with the service. The current climate clearly makes just-in-time delivery even more valuable for them. Everyone, from multiples to independent merchants and end user customers, want to minimise their stock to conserve cash.”
Helping Meyer deliver the new “service guarantee” has been further investment in vehicles. Following an initial batch of 20, 18- and 26-tonne Scania trucks, it has ordered another 20, plus five artics, giving a total spend of over £4m. “Ultimately we aim to handle most deliveries in house,” said Mr Lazenby. “It not only gives us more control; our own drivers also act as ambassadors for the business.”
Leaner structure
Meyer has also become leaner, both in management structure and staffing levels.
The management team for parent holding company Meyer Timber Group, comprising Meyer Timber and Panel Co, now consists of Mr Lazenby as trading director, managing director Chris Rudd, operations director Phil Ellis and financial director Darren Barnett. The four also duplicate these roles on the boards of the two trading businesses.
The workforce, meanwhile, is down from 210 to 170. “Losing staff was tough, but we now have the number of people we need,” said Mr Lazenby. “And having such a small management team means we can make very rapid decisions.”
As for 2012, Mr Lazenby isn’t expecting to end up lying in a darkened room, but there are further items on the Meyer Timber agenda. Among the planned projects at Stoke are an exhibition and design centre to host customer and supplier events, finishing with a round on the golf course. An on-site cut-to-size facility is on the cards too, as is a dedicated container handling area. Late spring, the company is also switching to Progressive Solutions’ bisTrack management software.
The bottom line of all this development is planned turnover this year of £120m-plus, which equates to 400,000m³ of product, against 370,000m³ in 2011 – “with no help anticipated from market conditions”.
And longer term? “Our goal is market leadership,” said Mr Lazenby. “We want to be best in class.”
