Proximus extends its warehouse agreement with H.Essers until 2026
Since its creation in 2011, the Proximus Distribution Center in Courcelles, which centralizes all of the company’s logistic operations, has allowed Proximus to significantly reduce its ecological footprint and to deliver its products much faster to its customers. The center in Courcelles also helped to safeguard more than 200 jobs in a region with a significant unemployment rate. Today, Proximus has decided to strengthen its Belgian distribution center activities by extending its warehouse agreement with the leading transport and logistics company H.Essers. Over the past 5 years, Proximus and its partner H.Essers have worked hand in hand to continuously enhance the customer experience and increase their efficiency. Thanks to today’s agreement, they will continue to do so until at least 2026.
Meeting customer expectations while promoting sustainability
Today, Dominique Leroy, CEO of Proximus, and Hilde Essers, Chairman of the board of H.Essers, signed the extension of their existing warehouse agreement in Courcelles, near Charleroi. The 10-year agreement will run until 2026 and will enable both parties to focus on further developing a state-of-the art Proximus Distribution Center in terms of delivery, efficiency, IT capabilities, flexibility and stock accuracy.
Back in 2011, Proximus took the decision to centralize its logistic operations in one location in order to increase efficiency, simplify the processes and promote more sustainable activities. Since then, Proximus and the Limburg family company H.Essers, a leading player on the European market since 1928, jointly operate the Proximus Distribution Center in Courcelles. This move enabled Proximus to simplify its logistics by regrouping the 5 activities spread over 20 locations and 32 logistics partners in one location and 1 logistics partner. As a consequence, products are now delivered quicker and larger orders are more easily anticipated during peak & off-peak periods.
By centralizing our logistic operations, we have managed to reduce CO₂ emissions by 170 ton and have cut the transportation distances by 200,000 km. Thanks to the partnership with H.Essers in the Proximus Distribution Center of Courcelles, we have also been able to rethink the processes around the repair and swaps of modems and decoders, for example. This has enabled us to reduce by 10X the refurbishment period of our modems and decoders.
Thanks to the extension of their warehouse agreement, Proximus and H.Essers aim to do even better in the near future. As customers today demand a faster and more complete fulfilment of their delivery needs, mainly driven by e-commerce, the Proximus Distribution Center will support sales and repair activities with even faster deliveries. It will also give the customer the ability to decide where and when he wants to receive his order with a follow-up of the delivery status of his parcel(s).
Boosting local employment
Additionally, the extended partnership between Proximus and H.Essers will contribute to the local economic environment by further assuring employment to the approximately 220 employees, of which almost half work for a sheltered workplace. Furthermore, the re-engineering of the logistical chain and the focus on meeting customer expectations have also some indirect impact on employment in the region.
H.Essers has demonstrated that it is a true partner by continuously investing in IT, processes and resources to make the Proximus Distribution Center more efficient and now future-proof for Proximus. This agreement is a powerful illustration of Proximus’ focus to deliver a superior customer experience, without losing sight of our economic and environmental duty as a public company.
As Proximus’ strategic logistics partner, H.Essers keeps innovating and improving its logistics services for the telecom business. Key is to meet the future quality, flexibility and agility requirements for end customers, stores and technicians. The successful “reengineering project”, launched in close cooperation with Proximus, resulted in an omnichannel automated picking and packing solution based upon e-commerce needs. This project and the cooperation in general between Proximus and H.Essers can be defined as a real partnership always aiming for a win-win situation.
The Proximus Distribution Center in a few key figures
The total site currently operated by H.Essers in Courcelles covers an area of 40.000 m². For the Proximus activities, H.Essers built in 2011 a new logistics hall of 22.500 m² which received its BREEAM certification “GOOD” in 2012* and covered best-practices in the following categories: Health and Wellbeing, Energy, Transport, Water, Materials, Waste, Land use and Ecology, Pollution, Innovation.
On a yearly basis, more than 2 million kits are assembled and more than 1 million order lines are processed and distributed, representing approximately 2 million pieces of Fix devices (modems, decoders, phones….), 3 million pieces of mobile devices and 900.000 pieces of network equipment.
From the integration in Courcelles in May 2014 to date, 300.000 modems and 700.000 decoders have been refurbished and repaired on site.
*BREEAM (Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method) is the world’s leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings. It sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the de facto measure used to describe a building’s environmental performance.