3PL stands for Third Party Logistics, this is when you outsource your warehousing and distribution operations out to a provider with the skills and expertise to manage your requirements.
We use a combination of standard pallet racking with racks set up to store pallets that are 1.2m by 1.0m by 1.4m high weighing a maximum of a tonne, and a range of shelving set up as pick faces, designed to store cartons of single SKU items, we have the ability to change the size of our pick faces to store a range of products.
We use Carton Cloud to manage all our warehousing functions. It’s an amazing system that gives us the ability to fulfil orders quickly and accurately, as well as a complete inventory tracking and history.
Carton Cloud also allows us and our customers to have a good suite of visibility tools that can be used to manage supply chains efficiently and effectively.
We use the mobile app for Carton Cloud that allows us to manage picks on smartphones with a Bluetooth Scanner. This keeps scanning easy and equipment scalable.
Ideally, we would like to have all products barcoded as this helps build accuracy into our picking processes. Our system can manage picking with out barcodes as well, but we prefer to have everything barcoded if possible.
This is completely up to you. We build our packaging processes to ensure that the delivery meets your brands image and the unboxing/receiving experience that your customers want. We can help plan the type of packaging with you to build a cost effective solutions that meets your brands needs or image.
Whilst we ultimately leave the packaging to you, we would strongly encourage recycled material and packaging that is compostable or fully recyclable.
We use a range of carriers to ensure that the best possible delivery service is used for your orders, NZ Post, NZ Couriers, Kiwi Express, and Fedex are our main courier carriers. For Bulk transport we use our sister company Cargo Plus in the Auckland area, and select subcontractors based on location.
Yes, we do. Occasionally, we get told by customers that they can get a lower freight rate than our rate card, whilst this is unusual as we work hard to keep our rates as competitive as possible, a freight rate directly from your carrier represents the cost of the physical transport only. There are a lot of activities around this movement that need to be factored in, including: negotiating and managing carriers including monthly catch ups, set up and management of our transport systems, integration with carrier systems, manifesting shipments, loading shipments, reconciling and managing carrier invoices, dealing with issues and claims, and managing returns or freight forwards. All these activities are covered by our freight rates that include a margin.
Generally no, there is a lot of extra management, integration, and planning to have additional carriers operate within our systems and in our physical space accurately and safely. There are significant additional costs on our operations to manage additional carriers as well. If its a deal breaker, have a chat to us to see what we can accommodate, but keep in mind we would need to charge additional costs to cover the margin that covers vital processes as mentioned above.
We run a small customer service team as all information is available to our customers in our CartonCloud portal. We aim for customers to be self sufficient in the portal, ensuring that as much information as possible is available, including transactional information, reports, invoices and product info. While we want you to use the portal for queries, we want you to come to us for issues like damages, claims, KPI issues.
Yes you do, all goods are held at the owners risk. We would recommend talking to your insurance broker to ensure you have adequate Marine or Storage cover as a minimum. We hold Bailees insurance to cover our liabilities while performing 3PL services.
We sure can, we have an ATF license and approved TFO’s and AP’s that comply with all MPI procedures. We have a covered yard that we drop containers in for unloading, and we can de-hire within your allocated free days as well. We are happy to process palletised and loose containers, ensuring that with loose loads we stack to your recommended pallet TiHi configurations.
Definitely, while we have a focus on ecommerce, we know that our customers sell in multiple channels. We can also process orders for supermarkets, retail stores, wholesale customer or to distributors and other warehouses. We use slightly different picking methodologies to pick these kind of orders, but our system is adaptable and easy to use. Tell us how you need the orders presented and we can build it into our processes.
Value added services are key components to manage within fulfilment, we can relabel, repack, kit, QC, and perform low level testing as examples
We can ship anywhere in the world that you need. We have arrangements with NZ Post, DHL and Fedex to be able to send products internationally. We can work with you to understand if your requirements around transit times, product size and value, and weighed against costs to find a service that suits.
This is something that has to work for both parties, and depends on the complexity of your requirements. We can move quickly and be live in a week for a customer with basic requirements and operating with a Shopify storefront. This gives us time to set the integration, source packaging, prepare systems, set up our storage and despatch area and train our team. More complex requirements (Value added services, return management, a range of picking types) we would plan in 2 to 4 weeks of onboarding time.
We don’t charge to onboard customers into our warehouse who sign a contract. There are costs to transport the products to our site, and to receive in your products but the set up of your account and our warehouse doesn’t attract any charges.
Please keep in mind that integration setup costs are free for integrations to Shopify, Woocommerce, Bigcommerce, Magento, Neto, Unleashed and Cin7. Other systems may attract set up costs
Drop us a line on the contact form of our website or mike@fulfilmentplus.co.nz and we can start discussing the best approach for fulfilling your orders!