Wincanton sees rising profits

REVENUE WAS up 2.9% on the previous year. The firm saw lower customer volumes, which impacted performance in H2.

Highlights included contract renewals with Sainsbury’s, Waitrose & Partners, Wickes, Co-op and Halfords, while strategic investments were made through the year in robotics and automation technologies. This included the deployment of Autonomous Mobile Robots at the Group’s Cygnia facility.

Chief executive officer James Wroath, said: “Our strategy delivered a strong result in FY23 despite the prevailing macro-economic challenges, particularly with regard to retail volumes and inflation. We continue to invest in technology as the route to deliver competitive advantage in the industry. Significant opportunities remain for warehouse automation across our Group, both in the foundation sectors and strategic growth markets.”

Cygnia

The eFulfilment side of the business grew 13.8% and revenue passing the £250m mark; excluding the impact of the Cygnia acquisition, revenue was up 7.6%. Core customer volumes, particularly in Cygnia, have however seen declines in line with the market and Wincanton has seen customers insourcing if they have capacity elsewhere in their network. Winning new contracts from insourced customers has similarly become more difficult for the same reason, says the company.

The firm continued: “In high volume eFulfilment we successfully delivered our first peak period for The White Company ahead of their move this year into The WEB, our automated facility in Rockingham. Elsewhere in this area we won business with Nkuku, Neal’s Yard Remedies, Huda Beauty, City Electrical Factors and C Brewers, as well as growing our partnership with Sephora. The loss of the Moonpig contract, as they insourced our activities, was a negative reflecting the general downturn in customer volumes in this sector.

This area of the business is also an important test bed for our automation ambitions. Our Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) deployment in Cygnia was the first to market for a shared-user robotics deployment in the UK. The system, working for customers such as Molton Brown and Whittard of Chelsea, has so far facilitated the picking of more than one million items and is over-delivering on our productivity expectations.”

For more information, visit www.wincanton.co.uk