Achieving greater supply chain efficiency for Canterbury of New Zealand

As a 120-year-old brand with a global reach, Canterbury of New Zealand’s rugby kits and other sports clothing have for many years enjoyed very strong brand familiarity amongst Australia’s sports mad consumers.

In 2015, Canterbury was facing their own supply chain challenges as well as growing pressure from competing brands coming into the Australia market, many of whom had robust supply chain operations. This led them to approach Ligentia to support with a new warehousing and distribution solution for Australia.

Up until that point, Canterbury managed their own warehouse, including an in-house team of 68 staff who ran the operation. The warehousing operation was complicated, inefficient and had a significant impact on their balance sheet – for example, Canterbury were reporting between 15-18% leakage of inventory. The brief was to phase out the existing set up and deliver a contract logistics solution that provided significant efficiency gains at a reduced cost.

Solution: A contract logistics solution providing enhanced access to data, driving efficiency as well as value for end customers

End customer experience was a key area of improvement for Canterbury. Canterbury’s team wear division, historically very critical to brand recognition, was facing significant competition and cannibalisation from competitors. The solution from Ligentia needed to improve efficiency and deliver increased value from the start.

Within a 3-month period, Ligentia had stood up a new contract logistics solution which supported B2B distribution across Australia as well as online fulfillment. The new warehouse solution covered only one fifth of the space of the original Canterbury warehouse, with a team of only 8 to manage the new operation, many of whom had been brought over from Canterbury’s team.

As part of the solution, Ligentia looked to implement technology to enhance supply chain visibility for Canterbury. This was challenging due to the limitations of Canterbury’s own ERP, but we were still able offer an enhanced solution as compared to the previous one. This included a new warehouse management system that provides real time inventory management via scanning technology. The WMS data is connected back to Canterbury’s ERP system, enhancing the data they can access through that system, though not in real time. To instantly view information such as stock on hand and activity progress, the Canterbury team is able to login to the customer portal layer of the WMS.
3 years following the original engagement in 2015, we were given the opportunity to bid for Canterbury’s ocean freight (in 2018). So today, in addition to the contract logistics solution we also manage 400 TEU into Australia and 100 TEU into New Zealand each year (plus adhoc airfreight when urgently needed). To support better visibility on goods enroute, Ligentix Core has been implemented to allow Canterbury to view the status of in transit shipments.

The result: dramatically improved inventory management and speed to market

Today, Canterbury is a part of the UK owned Pentland Group, which invests in a wide range of sports, outdoor and sports fashion & lifestyle brands. Pentland Group has extensive experience working with a wide range of global logistics brands to support their supply chains across the world, and we are proud that we stack up every time in terms of price and quality of solution in Oceania.

In 2023, we have transitioned Canterbury from the warehouse in Brisbane that they have been using since 2015 to a new higher quality facility in Melbourne, allowing us to offer Canterbury with an even higher quality solution as well as providing them with cost savings in on-line fulfilment, which is having a further benefit to CCC’s profitability.

Today, Canterbury benefits from a robust supply chain, warehouse and distribution solution with real time visibility on key data points, and 99.99% accuracy on their inventory control across Australia and New Zealand.