Overnight Sortation for a National Food Box Brand - Inside the M25, Six Nights a Week
The Situation
A national food box brand needed a relay sortation point inside the M25. Their main distribution centre was in the North of England. Getting boxes to London and the wider South East required an overnight run to a secondary site where deliveries could be sorted by courier route and dispatched to drivers first thing in the morning.
They needed a warehouse that could receive HGV deliveries overnight, sort a high volume of boxes by route before 10am, and do it reliably six nights a week, every week.
They came to us.
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The Challenge
The operation had several non-negotiable requirements.
Volume. The client was growing fast. The warehouse partner needed to be able to scale with them, not just handle current volumes, and absorb significant growth without disruption to the operation.
Speed. Boxes arriving overnight needed to be sorted, organised by courier route, and ready for driver collection by 10am every morning. A delay in sortation meant a delay in delivery which meant missed morning time slots and failed customer promises.
Reliability. A food box arriving a day late is not just a logistics failure it is a spoiled product and a cancelled subscription. The sortation operation had to work every night. Not most nights. Every night.
Consistency. With a team of 14 working the operation, consistency of process mattered. Routes needed to be sorted the same way every night so drivers knew exactly where to find their load.
What We Did
We set up a dedicated overnight sortation operation at our site in Grays, Essex inside the M25 via the A13, directly accessible for HGV deliveries from the North and for courier drivers collecting routes in the morning.
Each night, HGV deliveries arrived at our site carrying route-numbered boxes. Our team of 14 received the vehicles, unloaded the boxes, and sorted them by courier route. We organised each route’s boxes into a clearly labelled, driver-ready collection point. By 10am every morning, the warehouse was sorted, cleared, and ready for the next night’s operation.
The process ran six nights a week, every week, for five years.
The Results
Volume growth absorbed without disruption. The operation started at 5,000 boxes per weekend. Over five years, it grew to approximately 30,000 boxes per week across six nights – a sixfold increase in volume handled by the same operation, scaled progressively without disruption to the daily 10am deadline.
60 to 80 courier routes sorted per night. At peak, the team was sorting between 60 and 80 individual courier routes every night with each route’s boxes identified, organised, and staged for driver collection before the morning deadline.
Five years of consistent delivery. The operation ran for five years. In that time, the client grew significantly. The sortation operation grew with them using the same process, with larger volumes, same reliability. No missed deadlines, no failed mornings, no disruption to the delivery network.
What This Demonstrates
This case study is relevant to any business that needs:
- A relay point or secondary distribution hub inside or near the M25
- Overnight receiving and same-morning sortation capability
- A warehouse partner that can scale with growing volumes without renegotiating or rebuilding the operation
- Consistent, reliable performance over an extended period and not just a short-term arrangement
Our site in Grays is 20 to 30 minutes from East London via the A13, on the M25 corridor, with HGV access and the labour team to handle high-volume overnight operations.
Related Services
If your operation has similar requirements, the most relevant services from our Grays site are:
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