Geodis has won a tender from major French DIY retailer Castorama for home deliveries of websiteorders for the next three years.
The new contract, whose value was not disclosed, further strengthens the collaborative effort intransport and logistics services started up by the two groups in 2005, the French logistics groupsaid.
Since the start of 2013, Geodis has been using a new, 24,000 sqm warehouse inSaint-Quentin-Fallavier in the Isère department to handle Castorama’s e-commerce business andmanage the cross-docking activities required to deliver the customer’s stores in the Lyon area.
One third of the warehouse’s capacity is used for storing, preparing orders and coordinatingtransport operations for the 12,000 product references concerned by the customer’s e-commerceactivity. Geodis directly handles deliveries of large, value-added goods requiring specialresources.
The cross-docking operations provided since 2006 by Geodis at the Corbas site in the Rhônedepartment were transferred to the Saint-Quentin-Fallavier warehouse for the new contract, and areused to supply continuous flows to the 19 Castorama stores in the Lyon area. The new contract hasled to the creation of 36 new jobs at the new platform.
To respond to the diversity of the deliveries generated by Castorama’s activities, Geodis hasintroduced special vehicles, including crane trucks for “heavy” equipment and vans for citycentres, as well as two-person teams for special home-delivery operations.
Jean-Paul Vignal, managing director of Geodis Logistics, commented: “The trust placed in us byCastorama underscores our expertise in e-commerce logistics. Through its capacity for innovation,Geodis provides the customer with a global solution adapted to its specific needs, particularly interms of the size and type of goods”.
Pierre Coustenoble, Director of Logistics and Multichannel at Castorama, said: “With Geodis wehave found a partner able to support us in the long term and propose global and intelligentsolutions grouping a diverse range of transport, logistics and distribution services”.
Geodis has also handled multimodal rail-road transport between northern France and the Lyon areafor Castorama since 2011. With this expertise, it enables its customer to innovate in thesustainable management of its supply chain.
Castorama, a member of the Kingfisher group, is a leading home-improvement retailer with 103stores across France. In 2011 the company had revenues of €3.3 billion and held an 18.4% share ofthe mass DIY retail market in France.
