Apologies if you have received this twice, the first publication of this message was accidentally not linked to our Blog. This release has some additional info. 

SCS has spent the last few months doing a comprehensive review of our Bulk Freight throughout New Zealand. As most of you will be aware we have had a long standing relationship with RETKO Transport however the review has resulted in a decision to change providers.

We have decided to split the business between the North and the South. BASCIK Transport will handle all of the South Island except for Nelson and Blenheim. BASCIK has been a family owned business established back in 1970. The attraction with BASCIK is that they only operate a service between Auckland and the South Island. They are a major customer for Kiwi Rail and use Christchurch and Dunedin as the main hubs for distribution throughout the South Island. All their freight gets loaded into containers at their Auckland  site in Onehunga. They take extreme pride in making sure all the loadings are secure and safe and all the gaps are filled with polystyrene sheeting to reduce the chance of movement while in transit. They have their own network of trucks that deliver throughout the South Island.  We are looking to on time deliveries with materially reduced damages. BASCIK will also provide us with an online tracking system which will report based on milestones which clients will be delighted with. Copies of POD’s will also be available online once they have been scanned into their system.

Daily Freight has been chosen for the North Island, Nelson and Blenheim. We believe this decision will give us the best of both worlds. We will get access to the Mainfreight Group enabling us to leverage off their entire IT platform while still dealing with a Carrier that is still small enough for SCS to build a very strong partnership with. The IT integration will give us full track and trace, sign on glass and access to POD’s.

With both of these Carriers, SCS will sit in their top 10 accounts so we will be very important business to them and we will be able to leverage competitive rates and high levels of Customer Service whilst lifting our technology offering to a new level. We expect the service levels overall will remain the same and/or better at around 98.5% on-time delivery standard with NI overnight, CHH north 48 hours and deep South and West Coast 2-3 days. 

This change will result in SCS updating our cartage tariff with average increases being up to a level of 4% plus the recent increase in RUC charges (across NZ all bulk carries) which was close to 1%. Whilst this is a larger increase than normal, our overall increases for bulk freight remain under 1% over the last 10 years. This level of increase is in part a correction due to large changes that have swept the NZ bulk freight landscape in the last 3 years which has seen the complete eradication of  of small to medium sized national forwarders, so we see this as a very positive result for our clients. Had we stayed with our current provider we would have had to recover increases of between 12 and 15% from SCS clients. RETKO Transport was involved in a merger late last year which resulted in them having to review their rates with SCS, the proposed Retko increase was one of two catalysts for the review which saw us deeply analyse the service, price and IT capabilities of 9 other providers. The process took over 3 months and involved a lot of reference checking, capability assessments and price modelling. We have a project team assigned to phase the transition over a 2-3 month period to ensure minimal disruption through this very important process.

Copies of the new rates will be sent out shortly and will come into effect from 01 August 2015. It is also worth noting that the current FAF is 2% lower now as compared to the period June to November last year so in this respect it is a net 2% increase on the base rates (excluding RUCs – Road User charges,  which are effectively a government imposed tax).  SCS clients can remain assured that  we remain absolutely committed to ensuring our average increases remain the lowest possible in our industry without compromising service levels and client satisfaction.

We are very excited about the changes moving forward and are confident that all clients will see improvements in online solutions and Customer Service levels. If you have any questions about the changes, please contact Peter on peter.furlong@supplycs.com or 021-220 1006.