I’m reminded of an article that good ol’ George Monbiot wrote back in the good ol’ days where he declared himself a burgeoning Welsh patriot and talked about the open veins of Wales, there is much synergy with your argument about the M4 Jac, although he writes about the railway network. I’m not sure you’ll thank me for the comparison – with George anyway – but i think it helps develop the debate / argument – http://www.monbiot.com/2008/12/30/the-open-veins-of-wales/

At the risk of being offensive (something I always try to avoid) . . . T-h-i-s i-s n-o-t a-b-o-u-t f-u-c-k-i-n-g T-e-s-c-o (apologies, Brychan). How do you know so much, anyway, ‘Dave’; are you the deputy assistant under manager at Cwmbran, or perhaps some nerd who hangs around distribution depots in the middle of the night taking truck numbers? Maybe you enjoy ‘lifts’ with hairy-arsed truck drivers. Whatever the answer, I don’t give a fuck about Tesco. It was just an example I plucked from the ether.

The thrust of my article – because obviously it’s escaped you – is that devolution is a load of bollocks because Wales is more firmly controlled from London than ever before, and that London exercises power through its civil servants based in Wales, which is why ‘our’ politicians in the Assembly don’t know what they’re talking about. THAT is the matter in hand, not fucking Tesco!

Don’t waste your time writing any more about Tesco because it will not be published.

Harlow closed for the same reason as Chespstow because it was a first generation sized depot and too small, others like Didcot and Hinkley are under threat. Dagenham was built on the former Ford plant and is undersized meaning the empty Harlow may have to be reopened. There is absolutely no threat to Magor.

You said “If the west of England and south Wales can both be supplied from its Avonmouth depot then Tesco wont keep its depot in Magor open” A direct accusation that Tesco favours England over Wales.

I’ve proven otherwise, they’re both part of the same chain carrying out different functions. I’m dealing with a direct accusation made so it is relevant.

The reason why Tesco closed a distribution centre in Harlow (Essex) is because they don’t want Anglian produce and re-located to Dagenham on the new subsidised London FreePort (containers) which is now shipping in NewZealand lamb and potatoes from Tunisia.

Please note that while Tesco are moving warehousing away from Wales, Aldi is moving warehousing into Wales.
Aldi are opening a new 46,000sqm facility at Coryton, near Cardiff.

This is nothing to do with national boundaries, but the difference between centralised British (Tesco) and decentralised German (Aldi) approaches to logistics. Aldi has a ‘fresh local’ business model, for example, so Pembrokeshire potatoes (in season) are bought and distributed in Wales. In Grimsby, they get (cheap in season) Lincolnshire potatoes. Potatoes of any area are only spread over the distribution network if there is an end of season glut (like Jersey 2014). For non-perishable goods, the warehouse network is ‘balancing’, for example, cans of tuna in Aldi are moved from warehouse to warehouse as stock is drawn down by the stores, rather than central storage. Non-perishable stock lines are balanced across a distributed network rather than held centrally. This not only results in cheaper shelf prices, but less stock lines of out-of-season produce.

Aldi has a much lower carbon footprint by unit turnover than some of the ‘major’ supermarkets, which appears to have escaped the notice of the ‘green lobby’ of EnglandandWales who are too busy on pretend environmentalism which they see only through middle class spectacles. This continental business model imported by Aldi is mainly as a result of retail taxation and contractual weight loaded towards farmers common on the EU mainland, which incentivises local produce.

A variation on the Aldi model was pioneered in by the now defunct QuickSave in North Wales. The British operations of Sainsbury donate vast sums to the Labour Party and Tesco to the British Tory party, to prevent the ‘Europeanisation’ of the British supermarket business model. It’s also the reason why they see Chester as a hub for North Wales and Avonmouth as a hub for South Wales. It should also be noted that unlike the ‘British’ supermarkets Aldi Scotland is run as a different supply chain.

If Tesco followed the Aldi model, they wouldn’t have a distribution centre in Magor nor Avonmouth. They’d have centres at Cross Hands, Cardiff, Ebbw Vale, Yeovil, Exeter, Taunton, and Cirencester. Cheap seasonal food, purchased directly from farming cooperatives, into a distributed warehousing model.

If an Ystrad girl can argue this in Stasbourg, why can’t a Penygraig girl argue this case in Cardiff?

Stop fixating on Tesco and deal with the bigger argument, which is: Peripheral areas ALWAYS lose out economically from ‘improved communications’. Now deal with the issue being discussed or fuck off.

You can’t deliver tea, chicken, bananas and ice cream on the same trailer for obvious reasons so distribution centres concentrate on their own lines and deliver to a wide area in their zones, that means Tesco Cardiff & Bristol will get all its ambient from Magor and its produce and temperature controlled products from Avonmouth on full trailers.

Why would Tesco Magor spend millions insulating and fitting evaporators to half its warehouses just to keep Welsh nationalists happy? could you imagine outrage in Exeter if they found out their tinned peas have come on a truck from Wales?

Take a look at yourself sometimes…that is all.

“You can’t put bananas with chicken or ice cream with tea”. Why not? Supermarkets put them all under the same roof. The same can be done in a depot, even if it means different buildings. Otherwise, quote me the immutable law that says frozen peas must be stored in one place and breakfast cereals 20 miles away. Economies of scale and transportation considerations argue for one depot.

And anyway, I’m not talking about a Tesco consipracy, I just happened to use Tesco as an example. I’m making the unarguable point that peripheral areas ALWAYS lose out from improved communications; even more so in a State such as we are trapped in where London dominates everything and Wales has a colonial relationship with England.

So take a chill pill yourself and stop fantasising about me imagining Tesco conspiracies.

Absolutely true, and people in the northern English cities are waking up to this.

If you want to take the extreme example, then look at Wales before the coming of the railways. Small towns, even villages, were self-sufficent; with drapers, tailors, cobblers, bakers, butchers, smiths, and just about every other trade people needed. The railways turned the population of rural Wales into consumers of mass-produced goods from distant factories.

I don’t think you understand, Magor is an ambient depot that serves Tesco supermarkets all over south Wales, Bristol and the south west of England. Avonmouth is a temperature controlled depot, they serve the same supermarkets with different products, you can’t put bananas with chicken or ice cream with tea!

There’s no conspiracy Jac it called supply chain. Tesco just closed their big depot in Harlow, does that mean they’re anti Essex? Take a chill pill and stop filling in gaps with fantasy.