Part 1 – Lockdown and its effects

As COVID hit hard enough to cause a global lockdown in 2020, CWL found themselves suddenly processing high volumes of ecommerce orders driven by the uptake in online shoppers. Our fulfilment centre had to react quickly in order to despatch items to accommodate lockdown hobbies such as Kitchenware, Garden furniture and home improvement products. Our pick and pack operation had to navigate the challenge of a transport industry heavily affected by the demand and had to ensure we maximised distribution onto all available hauliers and carriers.

As lockdown continued, the national lack of PPE meant that we faced a new challenge of how to lend our resource to help our community in any way possible. CWL provided their own private transport to distribute PPE made by volunteers in the local community as well as our own staff members.  Alongside our daily role as part of the supply chain for the NHS.

CWL’s dedicated storage warehouse for medical supplies was a beehive of activity, ensuring that essential supplies were distributed to the NHS regional distribution Centres (RDC’s) as well as the Nightingale Hospital in London. We worked alongside our transport partners to ensure the distribution ran smoothly.

The uncertainty surrounding product arriving from China added to the challenges, but our proximity to Felixstowe ensured we could continue to receipt containers speedily and commence distribution of product as normal. The flexibility of our operation was essential at this time and aided us in maintaining efficiency.

We are immensely proud of all members of staff (office & warehouse) who have worked so hard (either working in office, warehouse or from home) to safely keep distribution running efficiently during a very difficult and uncertain time. “