If six vehicles from six suppliers arrive at a store every day, the door opens six times, the goods are counted six times and six queues form at the dock. With a consolidation centre, suppliers drop their goods at one point and the centre combines everything bound for the same destination onto one vehicle. It works on the same logic as cross-docking, with the combining done by destination.
Bristol shows the scale of the effect. The council-supported centre cut trips into the city centre by 70-80% at its peak between 2004 and 2018: for every 10 vehicles delivering to the centre, only 2 or 3 onward journeys went in.
The model pays off for buyers working with many small suppliers and in city centres with access restrictions; a small producer can reach a large chain by delivering to a single point. For a buyer with a few large suppliers, the extra handling step costs more than it saves. If nobody writes down at the start who carries the centre's cost, suppliers see it as an extra burden.
With chilled goods, the risk is the time the goods spend waiting at the centre. While products from different suppliers are combined in one area, the dwell time is logged and the goods are kept in insulated containers.
Three figures show whether the model works:
- vehicles arriving at the destination per day,
- total time spent on receiving,
- average dwell time at the centre.
