New fulfilment facility opens as DKF continues to grow

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DK Fulfilment Ltd (DKF) the e-commerce order fulfilment specialist, has opened a 165,000 sq ft dedicated fulfilment facility in Coventry.

The site, which has undergone major refurbishment work, offers three storage chambers and features a combination of wide and narrow aisle pallet racking as well as small parts storage bays and a dedicated pick, pack and re-work area as well as modern office accommodation.

The building is served by a new fleet of Toyota materials handling equipment, including counterbalanced and reach trucks, very narrow aisle trucks and man-aloft high level order pickers, while a significant investment has been made in new warehouse and courier management software. DKF's warehouse management software is a new system developed by Swift Computing called Context specifically for fulfilment companies. The courier management suite is from Hypaship.

Unusually for a fulfilment centre, the bulk pallet storage cube has been designed to allow DKF's clients to store 2metre high pallets – which enables storage costs to be minimised.

"The opening of our new Coventry unit represents an important stage in our development strategy and being aligned to our Germany facility near Frankfurt, we are now in a strong position to offer pan-European coverage to our clients" comments Mark Elward, DKF's managing director.

"In the past year our turnover has grown by some 40 per cent and we have more than trebled the size of our client base.

"We expect this strong growth to continue and accelerate as we develop our relationship with existing clients and win new business within the rapidly expanding online fulfilment arena."

DKF – which is part of the DK Group – operates three UK fulfilment sites from where it services the requirements of a diverse online retail client base.