8) Gavin Chappell, supply chain director, Asda
Part of the giant Walmart family, Asda vies with Sainsbury’s for second position in the UK grocery retailing pecking order with annual sales of £23bn and 400 stores. With 23 DCs around the UK and a fleet of nearly 1,000 vehicles, Asda likes to keep control of its store deliveries while working closely with its third party carriers on international and primary movements.
Asda Logistics Services makes an average of 936,000 deliveries a year to stores: that’s 84 million truck miles a year and, as the UK’s lowest price supermarket, Chappell and his team are under constant pressure to improve service levels while keeping down the cost per case, ensuring Asda has earned its reputation for being lean, mean and green. The transport operation is about to put 50 dual fuel trucks into operation in Bristol as it looks to maintain its cost and environmental edge – and there is every chance that it could look to buy more.
Asda is also at the forefront of road safety, and is putting 2,400 of its in-house drivers through vulnerable road user training as it looks to improve safety levels on its ever increasing amount of urban drops. Where Asda leads in such an ambitious initiative, others will follow.
