Vitaal, part of the Nationwide Fruit group, have announced that they will close their facility in Poeldijk, The Netherlands, citing increased post-Brexit protocols and increased paperwork and costs as contributing factors.
"After much consideration, we've taken the decision to close down our warehouse facility in Poeldijk at ABC Westland on 31st July. The reason for this is, mainly as a result of Brexit, the volume of work going through the Poeldijk warehouse has reduced considerably. The days of collating a mixed pallet of produce in Poeldijk for delivery direct to a customer in the UK have gone," said Tim O'Malley, Group Managing Director at Nationwide Produce. "The post-Brexit protocols require significant paperwork submissions and processing costs on every consignment. This is set to increase further in October with mandatory phytosanitary certificates required on all fresh produce from the EU to the UK.
"This has caused us to re-model our business, we have recently added a large extension to our Evesham depot that is conveniently located in Central England for logistic purposes. We have 5 additional multi-temperature cold stores with a 2500 pallet capacity, this has enabled us to buy in bulk volumes and offer split, multi-product pallets to our customers at competitive prices.
"We are moving to a more direct model of arranging delivery direct from Dutch growers to our depots or customers without the expense of RH&D at Poeldijk. For that, we still need admin staff over there as there is still a lot of paperwork to complete. We shall continue to have a buying/admin office in the Poeldijk area that will work in tandem with our other NL office in Emmen. The main difference will be that we will no longer have our own warehouse as it's become an expensive luxury. We are moving to a more direct model to reduce costs and therefore, become more competitive.
"We would like to thank and reassure our loyal suppliers and service providers that this change does not affect our commitment to our established business in NL. We are looking to continue to build our NL operations for the future, just in a different format."
