Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 25th April 2024 Issue no. 1111

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Speed manufacturing finds a new home

UK cleaning chemicals manufacturer Greyland, renowned for its 'speed manufacturing' policy that sees an unrivalled order to delivery turnaround in only four days, has found a new home.

With hundreds of distributors around the UK, as well as in Europe, Greyland is now one of the country's leading cleaning chemicals manufacturers, but after 13 years in business, it is true to say that the company had far outgrown its original premises.

Having grown into all the available space at the old factory, as well as taking over a second site nearby that was entirely devoted to warehousing, the steadily continuing growth in turnover (currently standing at £4m annually, and which is expected to double within three years), meant that in order for capacity to keep pace, more modern premises where the entire process could be made even more efficient, was becoming a real necessity.

Fortunately, a 34,000 sq ft factory and warehouse sited not more than 4 miles from the old factory in Stockport, did become available. Located in a modern purpose-built estate in nearby Tameside Park, and with easy access to the M60 Manchester Ring Road and the rest of the UK motorway network, the new site is proving to be ideally suited to the task.

Not only is there ample space to organise the frequent large and small deliveries in and out of the expansive fully enclosed yard, but all the warehousing of both raw and manufactured stock can also now be held in one place.

The chemical manufacturing area is well thought out, having been carefully pre-planned and made ready beforehand including necessary building works to adapt the premises in the weeks prior to Greyland's occupation over the Christmas break.

This was in itself a keen exercise in logistics as the old factory continued to maintain normal production and deliveries throughout the period, ceasing activity only for the minimum three days of Christmas Bank Holiday closure, which is when the move took place, starting up production again at the new factory early in the New Year.

The production area itself holds several vats of various sizes, up to and including 10 tonnes capacity. This is to ensure that large orders can easily be accommodated at the same time as the more regular batch sizes are produced. Because mixing is all done by weight, and not by volume, industrial weighing scales have been set into the floor beneath each vat.

Consistency in quality has always been a vital ingredient of the Greyland success story, together with competitive pricing and perhaps most of all, the rapid turnaround in delivery.

To facilitate this, stocks of the appropriate chemical containers are now stored close by, and in parallel to, each filling line, enabling a continual production process with no unnecessary delays, while a massive amount of high-level state of the art storage racking has been installed, served by the latest in versatile heavy lifting equipment.

Once off the filling line, orders are boxed up, palletised and film-wrapped on one of the nearby carousels ready for transportation to dispatch, and then ultimately, shipment to the customer.

Both Quality Control and the label printing departments are each located alongside the production and filling areas, making each of those functions readily convenient. Goods In and Goods Out are sited just where they should be, meaning that even the largest deliveries can be taken off or put on at the front of the building - and all with minimum cartage within the factory itself.

"Let us be your warehouse", has long been the Greyland mantra; it seems it's truer now than ever before, not just because of the extra storage capacity at Tameside Park, but also because distributors can rely on such a rapid turnaround from Greyland that they no longer need to tie up so much of their own money in holding stock for their customers.

Four days is exceptional for the industry, but even a next day delivery service is available for urgent fulfilment. Speed manufacturing in its truest sense.

Greyland Ltd
Tameside Park Industrial Estate
Cheshire
SK16 4PP

Tel: +44 (0) 161 476 3607
Fax: +44 (0) 161 476 3708

Email: [email protected]
Web: www.greyland.co.uk

1st March 2012