Waverley TBS back on track

One year on from the Hemel Hempstead fire that wrecked its Punchbowl depot, Waverley TBS is confident that annual sales will top last year's £500m.

"The business did go backwards for a while," said Waverley TBS managing director Jeff Jamet. "We let down some customers and lost some business. The fire was a huge blow for us, even bigger than we first realised. It's been an annus horribilis, in fact the worst year of my life. But we'll still finish ahead of the previous year, and I'm now very optimistic about the business."

Jamet explained that the disruption at Hemel Hempstead, one of the company's two

crucial hub sites, impacted

on deliveries right through to this July.

"Until the middle of the year, every day was like the Christmas at our other hub in Newcastle," he said. "All our 22 centres felt extra pressure, but they all responded magnificently."

At the same time, Waverley TBS was experiencing major technical problems as it integrated old computer systems under a new SAP package. Although it was due to be operational by September 2005, it was not until October that the system was up and running fully.

"It would have been nice for the SAP system to have gone in at a quieter time but that obviously wasn't possible," said Jamet. "It's not an easy process - like the difference between driving a car and flying a plane. But now it's in, we can, for the first time since Waverley and the Beer Seller merged, really measure our efficiency and make better-informed decisions. We're already seeing the improvement."