The third party logistics company, Oakland International focuses on offering ambient, chilled and frozen storage facilities to be used for food storage and distribution. The company works in the UK and Ireland, delivering their services to retail, discount, convenience and wholesale markets and facilities. Oakland have had a great deal of success in their operations and were recognised by the London Stock Exchange in 2016 as one of the Top 1000 Companies to inspire Britain.

Last year, Oakland International reached full capacity at their cold store facility in Redditch. Any possibility of further developing the site in order to increase their storage space has been ruled out, so the company have been looking for a new unit that would provide the additional space they need while also keeping pace with their level of growth.

The business managed to find a perfect facility in Corby, which is one of the fastest towns outside London. The site provides 5,200 square meters of storage space with the potential to increase the footprint of the unit to 7,900 square meters when required in the future. However, before moving in and starting their operations from this new Corby site, a significant amount of work was required. Work has been underway to get the site ready since October 2016, with £1.5 million invested into the refurbishment work.

Improvements on the site included the installation of energy efficient LED sensor lighting, a new energy efficient refrigeration system, racking, refurbishment work carried out on the loading bays as well as the creation of barrier and security systems and a new office design. The new unit is 14 meters high and has the capacity of 8,000 pallet locations. The pallet storage racks have been supplied to Oakland International by Narrow Aisle Ltd. Oakland International has also employed a fleet of Flexi trucks at their Redditch facility and have plans to employ Flexi truck at their new Corby store.

There is a range of premium costs involved in providing chilled storage, therefore it is vital for the business that the maximum amount of space is used. Flexi systems allow the Oakland to use as much space at their new unit as possible.