Palletways Challenges

Coronavirus, Brexit, war in Ukraine - some of the major recent challenges affecting the logistics industry. How can the UK-based European logistics network, Palletways cope with them? Stephanie Henwood, Digital Marketing Manager at Palletways Group, answers IdeaBank’s questions.

This has been a quite difficult period for all of us. What are the major challenges in logistics industry in the UK these days? The industry has changed significantly during the last couple of years with the rise in e-commerce leading to increased B2C shipments. These types of shipments were increasing anyway, but the accelerations of that growth because of Covid posed challenges in ensuring the correct resource was in place to meet the demand of harder delivery profiles. Changes also took place in the way we do business which was largely been conducted online rather than face-to-face. This took a lot of adapting but I feel our teams have adapted very well. Brexit also posed challenges with the new rules and regulations placed on international freight. Again this took a lot of preparation and adapting to new shipment profiles.

Can you see any differences between challenges in UK and in other European markets – especially the CEE region? The challenges we face appear to be the same throughout Europe with the main one being driver shortages, but also the pressure on logistics companies to reduce their carbon footprint and the effect of the pandemic with many businesses still operating with many of their staff working from home.

What are the most significant effects of Brexit on Palletways everyday activities? Brexit has caused challenges to shipments coming in and going out of the UK, particularly with the regular changes that occurred in respect of the correct documentation needed for customs.  This appears to have settled down now though and shipments appear to be going through with no issues.

What kind of changes has Covid-19 pandemic caused in Palletways’ business and marketing communications activities? The pandemic opened up a new segment of business for us due to the increased level of home deliveries that we saw happening which led us to introduce our P2C product which was designed specifically for online retailers.  It also led to us thinking more about the delivery process so our Auto Book in was developed to offer flexibility to our customers but also our members and helps remove their administration costs.  We communicated more to our home delivery customers to help educate them in how pallet delivery works as there is often an expectation that it is the same as parcel delivery.

The latest challenge for all of us Europe is the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Are you in any way active in these two markets? Does this violent situation have any effect on your marketing/communication? We do not operate in either of these countries so this does not affect us at present.

You can see Palletways communication several European markets. From your perspective what are the most important distinctive features of the CEE region? There are not distinctive features for the CEE region, as each country is distinctive in its own right.  Each country has key markets they target with communications and key segments of people within those markets.  Also each country communicates in a different way – in some countries Facebook is the main source of communication, but in others it is Twitter and LinkedIn.  Some countries like to put messages out several times a day and others only once a day.  Some countries send out several press pieces in a month whereas other do virtually none.  Each country is unique, but the Palletways message remains the same – We Deliver!

Stephanie Henwood Group Digital Marketing Manager for Palletways Group Limited.  She started working for Palletways in 2017 and in that time has revamped the websites, introduced active social media across the whole group, and has set the digital marketing strategy that feeds into the overall commercial strategy for the Group.  Stephanie also oversees the offline communications and PR, bringing a 360-degree view to all communications for the whole Palletways business.