The time critical logistics of one UK company will play a vital part in minimising harvesting machinery downtime this spring, as farmers in UK and Ireland face yet another weather ravaged crop calendar.
BDA (Bespoke Distribution Aviation) will be helping harvesting machinery manufacturers to make spare and service parts readily available around the clock by using BDA’s daily in-night air-bridge and specialist distribution networks to make time critical, hi-speed, Innight and early morning deliveries next day.
The pressure to keep harvesting machinery operating will be even higher than usual this year, with food and forage crop growth considered to be lagging six to eight weeks behind the norm due to cold air and soil temperatures. Coupled with reduced winter crop sowing, this is certain to reduce 2013 yields significantly. The unsettled weather forecast could further delay crop development and compress harvesting windows, making it absolutely vital to maximise process efficiency.
BDA has been providing door to door logistics solutions to CLAAS, the European leader in the combine harvester market and the world leader for self-propelled forage harvesters, since 2007. The service links the European Distribution Centre to the UK and Ireland, ensuring an early morning, next day delivery of required parts. Vital repairs to agricultural machinery are completed within hours of spares being ordered.
Steve Court BDA’s Sales & Marketing Director points out: “CLAAS is in its centenary year and has just turned out its 450,000 aftersales supply of spare parts and the fastest logistics delivery is critical for it to continue to be a leading manufacturer. As long as its spares are readily available all year round, farmers can be assured of minimum harvest disruption.”
The CLAAS dealer network is supported by domestic regional storage centres, as the effective cost of inventory storage of some parts would not be economical for individual dealers to keep in stock. CLAAS constantly holds over 135,000 different items at its central storage depot in Hamm Uentrop, Germany, dispatching up to 10,000 ordered components per day. Orders from the UK and Ireland are picked up at 18:00 by BDA's own vehicle courier fleet. The vehicles are driven directly to a BDA hub at Maastricht airport, where the CLAAS freight is then loaded on to a BDA aircraft. Following a 22:00 departure, the freight-only flight arrives at the BDA central UK hub, Coventry airport, at 22:30 local time.
The CLAAS shipments for deliveries in England, Scotland and Wales are unloaded immediately and injected directly into the in-night network in Coventry where they are consolidated with the UK originating orders from Saxham, Suffolk, for a country-wide delivery by 08:30, including the largest part of the Scottish region.
In a similar onward journey CLAAS shipments either originating from Hamm, Germany, or from Saxham, UK which are destined for the Irish and Northern Irish regions are loaded onto the aircraft at Coventry for departure to Dublin at 01:00, where shipments arrive at 02:15 and are injected into an Irish In-night network.
The requirement to look beyond the conventional logistics solutions, provides CLAAS with an immediate delivery solution for its customers. One such customer is James Stow of agricultural machinery dealer, Western Harvesters. He comments: ”The CLAAS spare part service is seamlessly efficient because parts that are not available in UK are delivered directly from Germany with the UK originating spare parts at the same early morning delivery."
