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- Water
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- Milk and bulk food
- Foodservice
Wincanton sectors

We work with organisations across many sectors, treating their businesses as our own and learning about their customers and operations. We take on their challenges and work in partnership for mutual reward. It’s only by understanding our customers' supply chains that we can help to deliver their goals and ambitions.

Retail

We help retailers at every point in the supply chain, from inbound containers to e-fulfilment and home delivery.

Consumer goods

Our solutions enable manufacturers to improve productivity, achieve efficiencies and deliver excellent customer service.

Construction

Our fleet of specialist equipment delivers various materials to both private and public sector construction projects.

Defence

We have extensive experience in providing logistics solutions for land, sea and air defence manufacturers.

Energy

With safety in mind, we transport both bulk and packaged energy, chemical and petroleum products.

Public sector

Through our partnership with Serco we provide secure custodial transport and logistics support to the public sector.

Water

Our emergency water service supports large corporates and utility companies when water supply is disrupted.

Events

We keep the show on the road providing water solutions for events, festivals and concerts.

Milk and bulk food

We provide bulk storage, handling and transport solutions for agricultural products, milk and ingredients.

Foodservice

Our multi-temperature facilities and vehicles can manage the supply chain for all catering needs.
How we work
Latest thinking

Services

Returns management

Adding value to reverse logistics

Returns management or reverse logistics is an important area for retailers. It can make or break customer satisfaction and loyalty, as well as the bottom line if the products are not put back on the shelf fast enough. To top it all it's a regulation minefield with the Consumer Rights directive, WEEE directive, and the Product Safety directive. Wincanton provides integrated returns management solutions which give retailers peace of mind that their customers’ returns are being handled in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

Managing customer returns

Wincanton provides returns management solutions as part of a complete end-to-end supply chain solution, ensuring customer satisfaction throughout. Our home delivery service aims to avoid the necessity for returns in the first place by offering a flexible delivery schedule and re-booking service, while our communication with both stores and the end customer ensures that everyone is kept fully informed of progress at all times.

If it’s unavoidable and a product is returned, we treat it with as much care as we do an inbound product, ensuring its speedy progression through the returns process so it can be put back on the shelf for resale where possible.

Minimising the cost of returns and reverse logistics

Returns are often complex to process. They may need investigation, sorting, recycling, repackaging or reworking to maximise the retail value of the returned product. Wincanton applies lean six sigma processes across our returns management procedure to avoid waste and limit margin erosion.

We build in flexibility to cater for the unscheduled and haphazard nature of returns while increasing traceability to ensure a successful flow of communication between the retailer and the consumer.

And when we’ve managed the return, got it back on the shelf and satisfied the customer with either a refund or replacement product, we analyse the reason the product was returned in the first place. This ensures that we continue to learn and drive improvements into the product, packaging and our service offer.