Hoya Lens UK Ltd is a market-leading, ophthalmic lens manufacturer and supplier, which is based in Wrexham, North Wales, and is part of the Hoya Corporation in Japan. It supplies lenses to high street, supermarket and independent opticians in the UK and Ireland. It also distributes Hoya products that are imported to the UK from Thailand.
The Challenge
With thousands of products in transit every month, Hoya needs flexibility as well as reliability. The company, which has been a customer of the DX Group for 10 years, wants choice in everything from the timing of deliveries to the charging structures and arrangements for confirming that parcels and other items of post have arrived safely.
In addition to dealing with products made at its factory in the UK, the company has recently asked DX - the UK & Ireland’s leading independent mail, courier and secure logistics company - to help it distribute Hoya products imported from Thailand.
The Solution
DX’s Gold, Silver and Consigned options for parcels and other items of tracked post have provided the desired flexibility for Hoya’s UK-generated delivery needs.
The Gold and Silver options have a one price per item charging system. However, while the gold service requires a customer signature and is suitable for particularly valuable parcels, the Silver one allows the delivery driver to sign for the item and post it through the letterbox.
The Consigned service charges by weight, rather than by number of items, and is ideal for deliveries of multiple parcels.
Hoya sends 23,000 to 25,000 items per month on the Silver Service, and 500 on the mixed Gold Service and Consigned Service. A further 12,000 to 14,000 items of marketing and other material are sent via DX’s regular mail service each month.
In response to Hoya’s request to distribute an additional 14,000 products per month from Thailand, a bespoke sorting office has been set up in Manchester. This service, which began in March 2010, provides an end to end solution. All the products, which arrive in bags of 10, are individually re-packed and despatched to customers. They can be tracked in Thailand and the UK via DX’s online software.
DX’s suggestion to have all the sorting, packaging and distribution work done in one location in Manchester, rather than being divided between Thailand and Wrexham, has considerably reduced Hoya’s operational costs.
The Recommendation
Jonathan R. Owen, Logistics Manager, Hoya, said: “Having a flexible, reliable and competitive mail and parcel delivery service is crucial to the smooth running of our business. DX offers all those things and more. They not only meet our day to day needs, they also work in partnership with us to offer bespoke solutions that really affect the bottom line, such as the Manchester sorting office. It is this personal service and understanding of our business needs that has kept us loyal to their services for so many years.”