LAST year was an interesting one. “Interesting” as in the ancient Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times”. No, not Covid/Brexit, fascinating as they are, but “interesting” decisions being made right here in Colchester regarding policies which will rebalance our town away from its best future as a prosperous tourist, heritage, arts and culture-led community to a character-lite, ex-military dormitory town with little income and a deserted town centre. All towns change and Colchester, as a developing, enterprising town, is no different. In our tint town centre, continuous development has had the unfortunate effect over the centuries of sweeping away lots of the period features that are so “in your face” in places like Winchester, Chester or Canterbury.
LAST year was an interesting one. “Interesting” as in the ancient Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times”. No, not Covid/Brexit, fascinating as they are, but “interesting” decisions being made right here in Colchester regarding policies which will rebalance our town away from its best future as a prosperous tourist, heritage, arts and culture-led community to a character-lite, ex-military dormitory town with little income and a deserted town centre. All towns change and Colchester, as a developing, enterprising town, is no different. In our tint town centre, continuous development has had the unfortunate effect over the centuries of sweeping away lots of the period features that are so “in your face” in places like Winchester, Chester or Canterbury.
Logistics can be a low margin sector. Even before a sniff of Covid & Brexit, the combined might of the top 100 logistics companies were reporting only 2.22% pre-tax profit, rising to 2.74% if you looked at the top 10. I wonder if, in Dragon’s Den, Touker Suleyman would consider it worth getting out of bed.
Depending on what part of the industry you’re in, your cost and service considerations will be different: dedicated facilities with open book and a set margin, perhaps with gain-share agreements; shared facilities with a number of specific clients and the risk that if one contract is lost, some element of marginal costing puts profit at risk; network facilities which depend on getting the volume throughput to cover the costs of the capital investment.