J. S. Davidson, formerly Chiltern Cold Storage, replaced its name in 2022 to mark a change in ownership and emphasize that in addition to being a frozen food storage company, the company is a full-service provider covering refrigerated and ambient temperature distribution.
The company has invested more than £1 million in higher quality warehouse, truck, trailer and forklift control formulas, as well as shelving formulas. It also has the first bloodless garage facility in the UK to introduce a biomass and absorption cooling formula that will especially reduce its total carbon emissions and protect the industry and its customers from future increases in energy prices.
Managing director John Davidson, pictured, has been with the company for almost 30 years and joined what was then the Chiltern Cold Store in 1994, just a year after it was founded in St Neots, near Peterborough, through Paul Jackson.
“We temporarily increased the business to £30 million in turnover, more than 70 cars and five locations,” says Davidson. “Paul started renting the area with Eismann, a German home delivery company, who built a giant centre in Corby where I was running at the time. “
In 1996, the company changed the name of Chiltern Cold Storage and Distribution to reflect its wider diversity of services.
Chiltern’s consumers were primarily frozen food brands and suppliers, Kibun Foods, an importer of original Japanese cuisine.
“Paul supported them in their move to the UK and set up a delivery service to restaurants and wholesalers in London,” says Davidson. “That’s where the company took off. “
Charismatic character
Davidson describes Jackson as a charismatic character “who can sell sand to Arabs” and who is “very passionate about the industry. “
One of Davidson’s first roles at Chiltern was managing the origin of McDonald’s apple pies and quick-sell doughnuts, which had been introduced in the UK two decades earlier with Golden West as its UK distribution arm.
“They asked me to spend two weeks with them to report on how they worked, and that gave me a wonderful insight into their business,” he says. They informed me a lot about the intricacies of what they were doing and put me in position with the criteria of the chain of origin they wanted. This put us at another point when we were talking to customers, because we could simply show them our quality manual, which was common practice for us at the time. It opened doors for us.
“It also opened the McDonald’s kitchen food business and we ended up with a European contract for apple pies and donuts in collaboration with Golden West and its European arm, STI in Germany.
“This is a national contract for 5,000 pallets. And because we had been so successful, the owners of Eismann UK asked us to take care of their operations.
This went well until the landlord moved Eismann from Corby to another bloodless room in Tonbridge, Kent. “Due to a dispute with the landlord, cracks started to appear and, Paul, we weren’t in a position to take care of either of us. “Davidson says. ” We need to abandon the Corby site and scale back our operations. In 1999 we moved to a quiet little position called Keyston, just off the A14.
“It’s an old turkey shop with 700 pallet spaces and at the time we had over 7,000 pallets. We took Kibun Foods, a small component of the Kitchen Range, and Drucker’s. The launch of McFlurry caused sales of apple doughnuts and pies to increase. So they took over the European component internally and we settled for the UK.
Over the next 3 years, Chiltern’s truck movements began to disappoint local citizens and they eventually filed a petition to have the operation shut down. In a typical response, Jackson requested permission to expand the warehouse, which citizens simply can’t object to because the land designated Class B for advertising purposes (since renamed Class E). Naturally, this didn’t sit well with the locals, so Jackson filed a compromise.
“He stood up in the assembly and said ‘if they allow us to convert the land to Class A for housing development, we’ll move,'” Davidson said. “In 14 days, it was done. Paul, through his network of contacts, then struck a deal with TDG to occupy an area here [next to J. S. Davidson’s current headquarters on Shrewsbury Road, Peterborough] in 2001.
“The bloodless garage facility in Keyston was razed and replaced with five control houses, so we did pretty well. “
Chiltern with a frozen garage chamber with a capacity of 2000 pallets in Peterborough and began to rebuild his visitor base.
“We had an agreement that we could take up more space, and within six months we had space,” Davidson says. “So we temporarily went back to where we were before because a number of consumers abandoned shipping and came back to us. “because of our service levels. “
But TDG is still in the bloodless garage market and is reluctant to see Chiltern expand too much. The site that J. S. Davidson recently occupied was owned by Christian Salvesen at the time, but the nearby Pedigree Petfood plant he served in the process of the last and bloodless garage installation. It had to be shut down.
“Paul got in touch with Salvesen’s sales reps and made a deal for us to rent a bloodless room here,” Davidson says. “That’s when we moved into this in 2003. This gave us a giant room with 6,500 pallet spaces.
“Then we won a contract with Baskin Robbins ice cream parlor and first of all we used another transport provider, but Paul tried to do the transport ourselves.
Internal Transport
As a result, the company acquired its first 18-tonne truck in 2005 and began expanding its fleet of heavy-duty trucks, before changing the name to Chiltern Cold Storage Group in 2006.
While Chiltern was preparing to move to Salvesen, Pourshins, which had a presence at TDG’s premises, was looking for another workshop provider.
“They were part of the airlines’ supply chain and took care of the in-flight catering materials and executive lounges for some airlines,” Davidson says. “Paul had closed the deal and the weekend we moved in, they moved in with us. Here we combined as a team and everything went well. We also switched to ambient and cold at that time, but for the airline industry.
“We continued to grow our business to the point where we needed to grow, and Christian Salvesen had an empty moment. We proposed to them to buy the site, but they refused, so we started looking for other sites in Peterborough. They were all too expensive, so we went through an era of uncertainty until in 2015 Salvesen came back to us with a deal, but it had to be closed in nine months.
“We have controlled this and for the first time we had our destiny in our own hands, without renting or renting space. “
The deal allowed Chiltern to own two bloodless garage warehouses with a total of 10,600 pallet spaces.
Pourshins developed as it secured new contracts with emerging cheap airlines. “We didn’t have to look for new consumers because it tripled our growth,” Davidson says. “We ended up flying to Ryanair and EasyJet destinations across Europe. We dealt with the UK and DFDS provided shipping to European sites.
This contract also presented opportunities for expansion into new sectors, such as the co-packaging of snack boxes for airlines, and at its peak, 8 production lines were in operation. E-commerce is another area that Chiltern has ventured into, with a new consumer, Allplants, a vegan. food provider.
“In e-commerce, we’ve found that we need to get people to a certain point before they want to take another big step,” Davidson says. “They went from 5,000 to 15,000 orders a week. “
The next step came in 2015, when Jackson landed a deal with the takeout pizza franchise Dominoes.
“They were doing everything in-house and were looking at how to make their design more efficient,” Davidson says. “They wanted to focus on what they excelled at and find a spouse who would take care of the toughest spaces in the Southwest. from England and Scotland.
“We first explored the south-west because Paul was looking for a base further west than Bristol and discovered a deposit at Highbridge in Somerset. Three months into the project, Dominoes suspended it because they had more demanding situations in Scotland and looked for a better way to get back to it.
“Paul discovered a DHL site in Livingstone that was a former Tesco site with a 20,000 sq ft room ideal for playing dominoes. So after 4 weeks of educating all the drivers, we moved in and started operating, and it was an absolute disaster.
The operation, which served 62 retail outlets, had been designed as a crossover with products coming in and out directly on delivery vehicles. But when the first (delayed) carrier arrived, all the products, basically the pizza toppings, were in loose cardboard boxes. on pallets and had to be transported to the warehouse without blood.
“There were only 3 of us, so we unloaded the trailer with wheelbarrows,” Davidson says. “Then the truck arrived with 5,000 trays of pizza dough stacked 25 highs. We unloaded it on Saturday at and returned in the morning to start picking up outbound orders. There were 30 tons of product at the time and 3 of us had to pick it up, put it into POS equipment and load it all back into five tons of 18 tons.
“We got the first truck delivered on time on Sunday afternoon at 7 p. m. And forty-five minutes later the driver came back saying ‘this task is not for me’. This after 4 weeks of training, but still, all the handling of the products was from the truck meant incredibly physical work.
More Success
But Davidson described Dominoes as a “good company to work with” and Chiltern opened the Highbridge site in the southwest, which was much more successful.
“We ended up with five deposits in the UK,” says Davidson. “Then in 2018, KFC had a debacle with DHL and Dominoes couldn’t take on a threat with a 3PL and picked it up internally, even though they still manage some of their wholesale stock. “
At the time, Chiltern earned £31 million a year and operated a fleet of 74 vehicles. At the time, Jackson, the largest shareholder, who after nearly 25 years, was looking to sell the company he had founded.
“We hired a senior FD, Paul Jephcott, who taught me a lot about finance,” Davidson says. “He made sure everything was okay and promoted the business for us. We had several corporations interested and yet given the offering I wanted.
“We did our due diligence and everything was signed, but friction started between Paul and the general manager of the other company. Then, one Friday, he came in and said, “The deal is done, I just don’t see myself running for it. “
The failure of the deal gave Davidson the opportunity to obtain the option to buy the company and the company’s bank in a position to back it up. “We put together a package that Paul was happy with,” he says. “Then three months later Paul came up to me and said, ‘What if we split the company?I’ll take care of the transport because I like transport and you’ll stay in the warehouse because you love the warehouse.
“At the time we had over 40 cars and we talked to a local lawyer who told us maybe it would work. “
Transport Partner
The concept was that Davidson would continue with Chiltern Cold Storage while Jackson took over the fleet and created Chiltern Distribution, which would be Davidson’s transportation service provider.
Jackson retired from the groupage business, and as the corporations slowly separated, Davidson developed a relationship with his neighbor, the temperature-controlled specialty carrier Langdon’s.
“At the time, we stayed out of transportation and outsourced everything,” Davidson says. “Langdon takes care of our groupage and FreshLinc takes care of all our trucks, which has been for us. We didn’t have any trump cards, I think. You just pick up the phone to make the squares and we won a small percentage more.
Then, in 2020, Covid-19 hit and turned the world upside down.
“The airline business is still doing well, and then the pandemic came along and it disappeared overnight,” he says. “It’s a time of concern. “
“So we started looking for other customers, because airlines, catering and wholesale were our main businesses and it was difficult.
Davidson earned a call from his friend Steve Barker of Barker Finance, giving him his support, and as long as he didn’t refuse. “It’s a smart partnership in the sense that Steve brought a different view to the business, advising on financing, restructuring and generally seeing things from a different perspective,” he says.
“We wrote to all our consumers and explained that we needed to implement a Covid supplement and they literally got it. It was a difficult time, however, we got our core values back and the whole team literally came together. . It was a very enriching time that we do not forget with fond memories.
Davidson was then taken to a former PwC consulting firm employee, Nick Stern, who had been laid off and was self-employed.
Financial Models
“He came in and brought another detail of financial advice,” Davidson says. “He built models so that we could see in each palette what each visitor costs us. It gave us another idea of our costs, and we still use it today.
“Our biggest visitor at the time was a poultry supplier to the catering market and very few pubs had chosen to switch to takeaway. When we looked, their inventory had been with us for 25 weeks and the style showed us that after 12 weeks we started wasting money. We temporarily learned that we had to do something, so we organized meetings and brought the style.
“We told them there were two options: ‘You help cover the prices or we close the warehouse. ‘Luckily, they supported us and helped cover the prices, which was a smart thing to do.
The other challenge was that the airlines’ products were temporarily wasting their useful life and it looked like all 800 pallets were going to have to be destroyed.
“At the time, I was working with a local children’s charity, Little Miracles, so we started a food bank with a variety of meals,” Davidson says. “They would send a team every day and put them in a condition so that other people could come and pick them up. It has continued to grow and we have hosted 10 charities every day. During this period, we distributed 80,000 food parcels. We still do it today thanks to food donations.
Another bright spot in the Covid-19 cloud is that Davidson was able to speak directly to the top control of some of its consumers, albeit in Teams, more often.
“They asked me, ‘What do you do for a living?'” And I explained that, in addition to storing frozen popsicles, we do room temperature, refrigerated and co-pack packaging,” he says. “They didn’t have any concept because we never sold them to them. One visitor ended up storing all of his products here: ambient, refrigerated, and frozen, and we also started packaging them together.
“We had five or six consumers, so they didn’t know we could find a one-size-fits-all solution. “
Some of those consumers were promoting online, which allowed Chiltern to enter the e-commerce market for the first time. “We’ve built a wonderful business there,” Davidson says. We even made ice cream wrapped in dry ice. But unlike some companies, we didn’t see it for the last time and it wasn’t a core business, so after the pandemic, small consumers left.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Chiltern replaced its airline business with consumers who lacked a full diversity of services, and while air food has made a comeback, it now accounts for just 7% of revenue.
“We already know how we can get back into this market, because we’re a well-known vendor and we have secure protection protocols in place,” Davidson says. “They’re waiting to see what option the AAC will take, whether it’s clue detection, which costs around £30,000 per unit plus education, so it’s not too bad, or X-rays, which make up a £250,000 investment plus mass education. Load as desired 4 or consistent with rigs consistent with the machine.
“We would like to eventually get a regulated status, which means that any supplier can make a product, ship it to us, and we buy it as an undeclared product. When we pick you up, we find you with X-rays or light beams and then you are transported in a secure vehicle to the airport. We see a lot of perspectives there.
In 2022, Davidson will retire the company as J. S. Davidson to mark the separation from the Chiltern Cold Storage era. The call was selected through his team, not through himself, he said.
Although focused on warehousing, JS Davidson has an O license for 10 trucks and 10 trailers and lately manages a small fleet of six trucks, 3 of which are committed to a contract with KellyDeli, an importer of food from across Asia and Europe for delivery. to kiosks across the UK. A further two pieces and one 7. 5 tonne are for general delivery.
“In August 2023 we leased five Volvo cars from Seven Asset Management, which comply with TfL’s popular Direct Vision, so they can travel to London and we have purchased around 10. 6 million city trailers,” says Davidson. “Looking ahead, are we going to 8. 6?” They don’t have a lot of capacity, but they would give us more flexibility in the cities and allow us to work at night when the sets return to base, which would allow us to use more sets.
Davidson’s trailers are multi-temperature, but lately they only ship frozen and room-temperature products. He prefers contracts like KellyDeli, where trucks are engaged and don’t stop if a visitor cancels an order. “It’s more consistent with incoming revenue,” he says. There may also be opportunities coming from European restaurants coming to the UK and we can possibly build partnerships. “
Stern’s monetary model allowed Davidson to overhaul the charge base of the company, which, like all bloodless garage operations, suffers from overhead. He also wanted to start the company’s adventure toward net-zero carbon emissions. So 3 years ago, he started opportunities for classic electric refrigeration systems.
“It’s an old building and the energy prices are huge,” he says. “Net 0 is a vital issue for the Cold Chain Federation because we especially contribute to global warming. And my average expenditure on electricity has gone from £550,000 a year to £1. 8 million. I don’t get a lot of benefits and I had to create an energy supplement.
The company looked at many options, adding combined heat and power to gas, sun, biomass and wind. Wind and sun were temporarily discarded, giving rise to gas-fired cogeneration and biomass.
“My favorite fuel and Nick’s biomass,” Davidson says. “Gas is easier and we can also do it in six months. Then Mr Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced that he was going to phase out fuel, which might not have been such a smart idea. So biomass the path we took.
“I didn’t understand how carbon neutral it was to burn one tree, but it turned out that for every tree cut down, three new trees were planted. So, it made sense.
A biomass cooling formula works by burning a renewable fuel (in this case, wood chips sourced from qualified sustainable resources in the UK) and then converting the thermal energy into cooling from a liquid ammonia absorption chiller. It can succeed at -37°C, which is a decrease. than the maximum absorption refrigerators, which until recently could only operate at -10°C, and more than enough for the -22°C at which cold garage services operate.
It’s a giant, complex installation that takes up much more area than traditional electric refrigerator compressors; however, J. S. Davidson had enough area at the rear of its site to accommodate the wood chip warehouse, boiler, and oversized chemical package. It’s also far from cheap, costing more than £6 million, even though that amount was funded over 15 years through a forced takeover deal.
Regardless, the formula is expected to be operational in March 2024 and Davidson describes it as a “game-changer” for the company.
“This offsets 953,000 kg of CO2 by disconnecting us from the grid by at least 70%,” he says. “Waste heat is also generated that we can use to increase the temperature of environmental warehouses. The biomass fuel load is slightly higher than electric power and we have the RHI payment formula that helps.
“The main difference is that I have a 243 kW motor in my screw compressor and the absorption cooler has 26 kW because it runs a single pump. “
While electricity prices have fallen from a high of 80 pence per kWh to around 25 pence, Davidson says they will never return to the ninepence seen before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Instead of a six-figure economy, now “But if it breaks even, I’m satisfied because it’s more about reducing CO2 emissions.
“This will help us win business with consumers looking to reduce their Scope 3 emissions and we have plans to expand. We have a redundant hangar and have designed a 3,500-pallet cold room to be installed there. We are currently running some cold rooms and are thinking of putting them back in the freezer.
Davidson also plans to increase capacity at a nearby site, which could be cooled by the new plant that has been oversized to future-proof the business, and read about the feasibility of installing solar panels. “We’re designing a formula that will absorb the remaining 30% of my network usage,” he says. “My hope is that by 2025, Peterborough will be absolutely off the grid and 100 per cent carbon neutral. “
It is growing impatient with operators sitting idly by waiting for government incentives to invest in low-carbon technologies.
“The government will never legislate, except on fiscal matters, nor will it inspire us to do anything,” he said. “The RHI program was shut down because it was too successful, which is typical of the government. We can only decide our own destiny and we will have to move on.
David Davidson, pictured right, has joined the business family as Chief Operating Officer, a new role for the company.
The son of CEO John Davidson, David’s role will be to oversee the day-to-day operations of J. S. Davidson while also refining the company’s processes.
With a 23-year career in the British Army, most recently as a Sergeant in the 4th Regiment, Quartermaster Department of the Royal Ordnance where he was responsible for the supply and maintenance of a variety of military equipment.
John says, “As a company, we’ve tried to focus on creating a family-centered environment at JS Davidson and making sure we put that culture at the forefront of the business. Throughout its nearly 30-year history, The Foundation company has been built by leveraging this culture and instilling it at all levels of the company to ensure that as a team, we all move forward together toward a collective goal: to provide the most productive service possible to our valued customers.
“By being tasked with overseeing, motivating, and educating the military’s workforce corps, as well as selling the implementation of new processes within their department, we identified that David would be a valuable addition to the J. S. Davidson family. The military has a number of synergies with the logistics industry and many of the skills and experience David has developed throughout his career are transferable and applicable and can offer us something unique.
Chiltern Cold Storage was one of the first temperature-controlled logistics companies to achieve BRC global certification for warehousing and distribution in the UK. Since then, the company has maintained this accreditation, and in a recent unannounced audit, J. S. Davidson earned the top AA rating. *qualification.
“It’s a real tribute to the team that runs the bloodless warehouses,” says Davidson. “The key thing they’re looking for is food protection and how we protect products. This goes beyond compliance with food protection standards and addresses moral issues such as how we treat our staff.
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