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Welcome to the 15 April Warehouse & Logistics News. With Easter behind us it’s heads down again until the May Bank Holiday. In between, if you’re a ‘W&L’ professional there’s plenty to inspire you at the Multimodal 2009 Show at the Birmingham NEC, from Tuesday 28-Thursday 30 April. You can find our Multimodal 2009 Preview in the centre pages of this issue of the magazine.

Multimodal is the only event in its field in the UK to embrace the complete spectrum of freight transportation and logistics. Despite current trends, the organisers say Multimodal has already grown 60% in its second year, with new exhibitors representing 30% of the expansion. It’s good news all round given the doom and gloom we so often hear about trade shows in this industry.

Multimodal is on course to become the UK’s foremost transport and logistics show, and we wish the organisers and exhibitors every success. Warehouse & Logistics News will be at the NEC too, so come and visit our stand – it’ll be great to see you.

Our scheduled features in this issue are Packaging and Mezzanine Floors. Packaging covers transit packaging, case pallets and shrink film, crucial items for logistics operations whatever the economy is doing. The Mezzanine Floors feature embraces not only these structures, which are essential to warehousing and materials handling operations, but also access walkways and staircases.

A lot of people in the ‘W&L’ business have reportedly cut spending because times are tough. But investing in warehouse technology is proving a saviour in the current climate for Henderson Group, owners of the Spar, Eurospar, Vivo and Vivoxtra food and grocery franchises in Northern Ireland, as they testify in this issue.

Henderson’s investments in Zetes’ wireless and data capture technology have cut shrinkage over 50%, transformed customer service levels, saved £175,000 in asset losses and cut staff turnover. It has completely overhauled the business, says Pat McGarry, Henderson’s Logistics Director.

Also in this issue we interview LPC International’s senior consultant Ian Nicholls. Over the last 25 years Cirencester-based logistics planning consultancy LPC has developed a number of highly effective techniques to help logistics operations not only survive economic downturns but emerge stronger and fitter. Regular clients benefiting from LPC’s insights include Dixons Group, Sainsbury’s, Co-op Group in the UK, Unilever’s manufacturing operations in various countries and Loblaw, Canada’s biggest food and drink retailer.

Happy reading, and see you at Multimodal!

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