The Fortec Distribution Network plans to open a northern hub in a bid to unlock Scotland by the year’s end.

Speaking to mototransport.co.uk, Adrian Bradley, MD of the pallet network, said that the previous management team’s decision to scuttle Fortec’s northern hub in Warrington would now almost certainly be reversed.

“We’re just doing the business case for it at the moment,” said Bradley. “But there are so many benefits [to having one], such as a reduction in mileage and carbon footprint, so I’m 90% certain it will open in the third or fourth quarter of this year.”

Fortec said that while it may team up with a haulier-member for the premises, it will likely man the site directly, effectively adopting a landlord and tenant relationship where it can have direct control.

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“It would serve Scotland. It would be predominately be a northern gateway rather than a northern hub,” said Bradley, who returned to run the network late last year.

Adrian Bradley MD Fortec 2018

Adrian Bradley, MD, Fortec

“In the future we’ll see where connecting the east side through Leicester predominately [where a member has just opened a new facility] may then link back into the northern hub.

“Everyone has their northern hub because of that M6 corridor, it’s all Warrington,” he said.

Under Bradley’s leadership Fortec is now making more of its relationship with parent company Geodis (they share the same Northamptonshire site] too, in a departure from the past where the previous management kept a deliberate line between the two.

Conceding Fortec may have therefore missed a trick in the past, Bradley said: “Revenue for our members is more than a domestic pallet movement for quite an amount of them.

“It’s the association with Fortec, which is aligned with Geodis, [that forms part of the attraction]. We have members that are storing pallets for [Geodis] contract logistics, members that are moving goods under our nuclear contract, and we have members serving Geodis’s European customers for the UK domestic legs.”

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