Huel, a leading producer of nutritionally complete food products, has announced that it has recently purchased an electric heavy goods vehicle (eHGV) as part of its effort to enhance the environmental sustainability of its operations.
The electric truck, manufactured by Renault, has been deployed to transport Huel products from its new manufacturing plant in Milton Keynes to the GXO Wellingborough warehouse and is estimated to save 8.5 tonnes of CO2 per year.
From this facility in Wellingborough, Huel products are shipped direct to customers through the brand’s e-commerce operation, and goods are also distributed to retailers across the UK, including Tesco, Boots and Holland & Barrett.
Pure-play contract logistics provider GXO has been providing warehousing and transportation services to Huel for six years, and in this time Huel has seen significant business growth.
Huel first launched products in supermarkets in the UK in 2019, and its products are now available in 25,650 stores globally, more than double the 11,250 last year.
To address this increase in demand for Huel products, GXO has expanded the footprint the operating footprint for its partnership with Huel from 9,500ft² at the beginning, to 111,000ft² today.
This 1100% increase in operating footprint, which GXO says has been enabled by its ‘flexible warehousing solutions’, has – it says – ‘supported Huel’s growth trajectory and provided the space Huel needs to meet increasing demand from customers worldwide’.
Neville Dobson, head of global freight and logistics at Huel, said: “At Huel, we are growing globally at a rapid rate, and it is essential all our logistics operations keep pace with our customer demand.
“Our partnership with GXO continues to strengthen and together, we’re building a resilient and scalable supply chain that will support our expansion and ensure even more Hueligans can enjoy our nutritionally complete products.”
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In addition to the increase in footprint, GXO has also significantly increased the size of the workforce dedicated to Huel’s logistics operations. Starting with 43 colleagues in 2019, GXO has expanded its Huel team to 120 employees, which it says reflects the growing scale and success of the operation.
Martin Cooper, managing director of technology and consumer goods at GXO, added: “Our partnership with Huel is six years strong. We’re proud to have enabled Huel to meet the rapidly growing global consumer demand that is fuelling the amazing growth of this British company.
“By using the right adaptive technology to drive efficiencies of scale and monitoring sales and forward planning with the Huel team, we’ve kept pace with the company’s rapid domestic and international growth while transitioning Huel into a dedicated warehouse to continue to support their long-term growth.”
