EXPERTS MEET TO DISCUSS MAIN PROBLEMS OF STORAGE DEVELOPMENT FOR RETAIL

On December 4, the XV Annual Conference Retail in Russia: The path to the consumer took place, at which more than 150 key retailers met.

During the discussion, market experts discussed, among other things, their main "painful points" in terms of domestic warehouse development.

According to Aleksey Ivanov, the head of the supply department at STD Petrovich, warehouse developers lack an integrated approach with regards to not only the location, but also access roads.

As noted by the operating director of Utkonos, Alexey Sokolov, it is necessary to observe such aspects as organized accommodation of employees, access control, security, broadband Internet, so that it is possible to arrive and immediately get to work.

In addition, it is absolutely necessary that the parking lot is placed appropriately. "A significant part of the warehouse staff in the Moscow region is made up of visiting staff working on a rotational basis," said Alexander Khomich, general director and partner of Skladman.

As noted by Ilya Starodubtsev, the delivery director for Lamoda, despite the high degree of automation for working processes in modern warehouses, hundreds of people will still work here, so the location should be successful not only in terms of logistics, but also in terms of staff selection. "The rotation method appeared not because it is more profitable in terms of money, but because it is rather difficult to make hundreds of people go somewhere by train every day," the expert states.

Gleb Belavin, Deputy Director General of MLP Management Company, one of the more active participants in the discussion, said: “We know about all the needs of our tenants, representatives of the retail market, we are trying to take them into account and enrich our warehouse facilities’ infrastructure. Over the past three years, we organized facilities at our sites for personnel working for our tenants on a rotational basis, assisted in organizing personnel transportation to the facilities, and extended access roads at two facilities. As far as location is concerned, there is no doubt that this is the main aspect in the success of any logistics facility, but this is not possible to change anymore ... I think that our facilities are successfully located. ”

No less active in the discussion was Alexander Khomich, the general director and partner of Skladman, who raised the question of “last mile” warehouses.

The growth in demand in this area is due to the fact that retailers are increasingly required to organize urgent deliveries of goods to customers, which significantly increases their demand for “last mile” warehouses. According to experts, there are too few sites of this type on the warehouse market, as a result of which trading companies have to maintain their own premises in the city or in close proximity to it, or use outdated premises.

To date, the retail market is experiencing a shortage of “last mile” warehouses, from which goods are sent directly to the buyer. This was stated by general director and partner Skladman Alexander Khomich. According to him, the share of urgent deliveries has increased significantly, which requires a response from the warehouse market. It is difficult for retailers to organize urgent deliveries without their own warehouses, said Aleksey Ivanov, the head of the supply department at STD Petrovich. Currently, the standard delivery time of goods within St. Petersburg is four hours. Express delivery has a shorter time length, two hours. In Moscow, the average delivery time is currently 5-6 hours. However, capital retailers will have to actively work on reducing the time.

In Russia over the past eight years, the share of online-trade in retail trade has increased almost five times, and this trend could not but affect the organization of warehousing logistics and optimization of supply chains by logistics operators, explains Sergey Kuzichev, director of Knight Frank’s industrial real estate and land department. However, online retail uses a wide range of warehouse properties that meet several types of requirements and correspond to different stages of supply chains in this type of sales, says Oksana Kopylova, head of retail and warehouse real estate analytics for JLL. Many omnichannel operators service both online and physical stores using this warehouse segment. However, retailers who do not have offline points of presence, as a rule, organize the supply chain differently. When it comes to large companies, the business is often based on a large distribution center and a network of points for the removal of orders (PVZ), and delivery is carried out using several courier services or the Russian Postal Service. Fulfillment operators work in a similar way, accumulating customers’ stock for online stores in their warehouses. "However, it is worth noting that they do not use the PVZs, and often work with courier services directly," explains the expert.

According to Sergey Kuzichev, currently, within the Moscow Ring Road, the total volume of warehouses is about 1.8 million square meters, and more than 76% of that volume consists of industrial high-rise buildings of Soviet construction, which, by the way, are in demand, despite the high rates and low quality. First of all, warehouse turnover depends on the speed and quality of the order procurement, explains Oksana Kopylova. At the same time, new grade A and B capital warehouse complexes are also quickly filling up.

According to Knight Frank, the total area of new warehouses at the construction stage within the Moscow Ring Road is about 70,000 square meters. Moreover, there are very few quality warehouses in the city and within 1 km from the Moscow Ring Road - no more than 7%, and there are practically no facilities under construction, the JLL company noted. For 2019, only two projects have been announced, one of which is a refrigeration and freezing warehouse. According to Vasiliy Grigoriev, the deputy director of the CBRE market research department, the total area of quality warehouse complexes located directly within the city and near the Moscow Ring Road is only about 700,000 square meters, or 5% of all warehouse complexes in Moscow and the Moscow region. At the same time, there is practically no free space at these facilities. In terms of high-quality and more or less modern warehouse complexes used by retailers for urban logistics, their volume is approximately 70,000 square meters.