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various pack formats for each product. Until a few years
ago Tait was owned by the British company Harrison
Crosfield. In 1990 that company disposed of all its interests
in Asia. A management buy-out followed and Jim Cummings,
formerly the managing director, is now Chairman of Tait.
The business plans to become a public limited company in
future and apply for stock exchange listing.
The present managing director David Turner compares
the Tait of 1997 with what it was like ten years ago. "We
now have more leading brands in our range and as a result
we now operate two additional conventional warehouses.
We have modified our management structure. For fast
moving consumer goods we now have three different units:
beverages, groceries and tobacco, each with its own general
manager and its own sales force. Our groceries unit even
has three sales forces. In addition, we set up an entertain
ment division and an industry unit three years ago. For the
storage of all those products in the warehouse we have
been using a conveyor pallet-racking system for the past
couple of years."
The system is a superb example of logistic ingenuity. An
enormous warehouse with ten aisles and sixteen levels of
pallet racks can accommodate some ten thousand pallets.
Each product that enters the Tait warehouse is placed on a
pallet and given a bar code. The code is scanned into the
computer, which automatically calculates the best location
for the pallet in the warehouse in terms of the required
humidity and temperature. The pallets are placed in their
location completely automatically. With the aid of this sys
tem, and a specially developed software program, Tait can
accurately control and steer the flow of incoming goods 24
hours a day.
PORTS
Tait sells and distributes Heineken to forty wholesalers
throughout the entire country. They in turn sell direct to the
outlets or - if they are not sufficiently at home in a certain
segment of the market, for instance in the retail trade or
the Chinese restaurants - to a sub-wholesaler who does
have this know-how and the right contacts.
For the North and Central region of Taiwan use is made
of the port of Keelung, a city near Taipei and the home port
for both Tait and Heineken Taiwan. For the wholesalers in
the South the beer is shipped in from the Netherlands to
Kaohsiung. The period between placing an order and deli
very to the wholesalers is about eight weeks. The 20 ft con
tainers with Heineken spend half of that time on board the
ship sailing from Rotterdam to Taiwan.
In cooperation with Tait, Heineken Taiwan has develo
ped a system that ensures that stock levels are kept to a
minimum. "One-and-a-half to two weeks' stock is now nor
mal for Tait", says Victor Weng. Twice a week Tait provides
Heineken Taiwan with figures about the stock levels at the
wholesalers, so that the order flow to the Netherlands can
be accurately calculated. Especially in the summer period,
when beer consumption increases and the breweries in the
Netherlands are brewing at full capacity, it is important to
have a good spread in the pattern of orders.
WINE WAREHOUSE
Ten years ago, after completing his military service, Chih
Feng Huang started his own small wholesale business. He
bought a truck, handled the sales and distribution himself
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