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DHSC Visit Our Runcorn Site

15 July 2022

DHSC Team Visit Runcorn

As part of a recent supplier resilience and engagement away day, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) visited our Runcorn site to understand how they manage the sourcing, delivery, and supply of healthcare products (including MedTech), services and food for NHS trusts and healthcare organisations across England and Wales.

The warehouse is organised similarly to a supermarket. For example during a weekly shop if you wanted to buy your coffee, you’d expect to find sugar in the same aisle – so it’s the same for the packers who will find related products in the same aisle.

Products come in a variety of units, from a single unit to a box or ‘eaches’ to a pallet. To reduce packing errors at each bay there are photos of the products, the unit they come in and some even have voice sensors to ensure the right unit is packed.

During a typical 12 month period around 250,000 individual parcels make up 70,000 deliveries, with over a million miles covered.

As part of NHS Supply Chain’s priority to strengthen resilience of our supply chain, the Runcorn operation has outgrown its current location, so we will be moving to a new Regional Distribution Centre (RDC) five minutes away at ‘Gorsey Point’.

The new site has increased capacity so NHS Supply Chain will be able to accommodate a broader range of products. The team are currently assessing what products they will hold there.

Read more about our move to Gorsey Point in our full Press Release.