It’s that time of year again! The summer holidays are almost over and that means we are all refreshed and ready to start thinking about retail peak.

diamondlogistics has been named as ‘One to Watch’ in Europe in a list of business excellence published by the European Business Awards, one of world’s largest and longest running business competitions.

The results of our 2019 client survey are in – and the most telling part of it is that we have a whopping 54% of them who prefer chocolate to tea or wine! We send a little thank you to all participants who fill in a survey and the results are clear. The days of diamonds client being drinkers are over! It’s a diamond first.

Consumer demand is driving even faster home delivery in the future.  A recent Institute of Couriers (2019) shows:

diamondlogistics are proud to announce the award of an alcohol license to enable product movements for our customers in time for the summer season. 

Last week I represented the Courier industry at the ‘APPG for Road Freight and Logistics, Skills Shortage Inquiry’ hosted by Sir Mike Penning MP. Yawn I hear you say – but it really isn’t! There is a mounting crisis in logistics in terms of driver recruitment, with a 60,000 shortfall, operating in a sector that doesn’t always attract the best talent. Logistics is the lifeblood of UK industry and it is a growing crisis meeting the ever increasing demand, particularly with the growing need to scale to support online fulfilment.

I was proud to represent the Logistics Industry at last nights Transport Infrastructure Skills Strategy – Three Years of Progress event at Transport for London on Wednesday July 10^th.  It is promoting and celebrating Apprenticeships in our industry and is forging a new pathway that makes young people consider what is actually a vibrant, fast pace and interesting career.

At diamond, we are passionate about small business. And obsessed about enabling them to have access to all the fulfilment and delivery services they need to help their business to grow.

Logistics is facing a recruitment crisis. In 2017 77% of haulage firms struggled to fill vacancies and 2018 saw a 45% increase in vacancies as logistics businesses struggle to recruit the right team. (Source: Monster UK)

We’re not just logistic professionals here at diamond but also consumers. So when we receive a beautiful product that we've waited over 15 working days for and it's delivered by the wrong carrier for the product we can’t help but open it with a little reluctance. This is something that our Company Secretary Charlotte recently experienced.

“I had ordered two beautiful plants from an online company. I had gone back and forth over whether to buy plants online for a while, but after checking the companies’ reviews I decided to place my order. The company after all had good reviews and garden centres have plants delivered to them all the time. What could possibly go wrong?