Manchester calling

THE EVENT offered great perspectives on warehouse transformation projects. Paul Gaish, Warehouse Excellence Manager, Warburtons spoke about an award-winning AGV project that reduced operator walking by 90,000km annually – significantly improving safety and efficiency. Paul shared: “Don’t lose sight of the point of the project, they can be complex. In this case, the key thing was to remove unwanted aspects of the job for our people, taking the long walks out.”

Scott Torrington, Managing Director UK & Ireland, at headline sponsor Element Logic spoke about market trends and reminded attendees that there will never be the perfect time to invest in warehouse transformation, such is the market uncertainty, but that forever delaying projects comes with its own pitfalls, as operations may fail to deliver the performance required.

Hatmill’s Richard Duffy spoke on the need to overcome the naysayers in your change project, the so-called ‘assassins’, not necessarily bad people, but nevertheless those who are capable of spreading an atmosphere of unease around the change you want to make as a company.

CEVA Logistics gave us a unique session with three presenters, all women at different stages of their logistics career, sharing insights on building a career and leadership skills. Debbie Godkin, Managing Director for Air & Ocean UKI, CEVA Logistics spoke about the need to be bold.

“Sometimes you need to take a job before you are ready, without necessarily knowing all nuances and nuts and bolts, but trusting your management ability. Leadership starts on the floor.

“Women often play key roles behind the scenes but we need to see more women step forward and be leaders that the teams can look to.”

We were also delighted to host Lisa Ramos and David Garton – powerful impactful and insightful speakers on forklift safety. Lisa Ramos is a forklift incident survivor and brings a rare passion for safety to her presentations. She has been a great servant to the logistics sector over many years and her talk shows the deep impact of such incidents on health, mental heath, work and family.

Property

Our now firmly established Property theatre saw great interest across two packed sessions focused on market trends and solving thorny issues for occupiers. There was much emphasis this year on how to save money on energy use, and how to generate your own energy with an investment in solar panels.

Speakers at the event predicted that eComm would continue to push warehouse use in the coming years.

In addition to the increase in eComm, Newmark partner Will Laing also noted that the rise in defence spending to meet the 3.5% of GDP spend across NATO members would also see a huge uplift in demand for warehousing space across the UK and Europe.

Thanks

A huge thank you to our headline sponsor Element Logic; event partners Infios, Consultus International and Sol PV Group, and registration partner Armstrong Nield; as well as our 50+ exhibitors.

We are extremely grateful for all of our speakers who shared such useful insights at the event and gave up their time to present.

We’d also like to thank our supporters, the UK Warehousing Association (UKWA); the UK Materials Handling Association (UKMHA); the Automated Material Handling Systems Association (AMHSA); and Road to Logistics.

We look forward to seeing you at next year’s events.

Event dates for 2026 are:

• Tomorrow’s Warehouse Coventry: 14 May 2026 (CBS Arena)
• Tomorrow’s Warehouse Manchester: 29 September 2026 (Old Trafford Cricket Ground)