Houston Bottling opts for Red Prairie DMS

The company, which was founded in 1988, exports around 90 percent of its bottled whisky, with large traffic lanes to Brazil, North America and Scandinavia while 70 percent of its co-packing activity is also exported. They also offer a decanting service for obsolete stock.

Houston Bottling has acquired the off-the-shelf Red Prairie duty management package as its previous DMS could not cope with the expansion of the company to two sites and had become obsolete.

Michael Toal, director, Houston Bottling and Co-pack, said: “As a business we were doing very well, to the point where we had outgrown our existing warehouse.  We wanted to expand, and attract new business, and to achieve this, we needed to invest in a new warehouse, and needed a solution with the capability to support our expansion plans. We also identified an opportunity to grow the business by offering increased outsourced bottling services, and invested in a new site in Dumbarton.

“We have implemented the bulk liquid module for our bottling operation and plan to implement further modules including bonded Package and Rework to further capitalise on the opportunities we see.”

Duty management has allowed Houston to benefit from a reduction in time spent on Customs returns, from one day to 15 minutes. As the process is no longer manual, it cuts the risk of penalties for filing late or incorrect documents.

The solution allows remote management across either site, allowing Houston to control staff levels more efficiently, vital at a time when the company needs to be extremely competitive and drive down costs. It can schedule where labour is required, so if the co-packing business is quiet, it can mobilise the team to focus efforts to the bottling site.

The bottling operation is carried out in a 40,000 sq ft facility in Dumbarton, which was opened in May 2008. Co-packing is managed from a 100,000 sq ft warehouse in Renfrew, where customers include Chivas Bros and Diageo.

June 09

1 June 2009 - Felicity Murray