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Palletline is investing £20m in a new central hub that it believes will help lure customers and members away from its rivals. Managing director Kevin Buchanan says that with the growth of the industry, networks have gained a reputation of only being interested in volume, with delays and damage to customers' pallets the result. He says: "We want to be able to demonstrate that it doesn't have to be that way. We think that customers will be happy to pay a bit more - it's cheaper to get it right first  time after all. The investment in quality is as crucial as volume itself."

The new hub is an existing building in Solihull, West Midlands, currently used for cross-dock operations. Buchanan says it only requires minimal conversion work allowing the network to move in during September. It will be a drive-through model, with freight unloaded and immediately sorted and reloaded onto trunk vehicles or stand trailers. The site has room for 48 trailers to be loaded at once, which Buch-anan says eliminates the need to store pallets in floor bays, thus cutting the amount of space needed. It will also be fully de-pedestrianised.

Palletline is introducing what it claims is an industry first at the new hub: a quality control centre where all pallets, both inbound and outbound, are scanned and photographed to maintain standards. With Palletline at capacity at its existing Birmingham site, the new hub will allow it to increase the number of pallets it handles each day: from a current  average of 9,000, ultimately rising to 25,000 in a 24-hour period, says Buchanan.

He adds: "We are giving ourselves enough headroom to allow us to grow. As we deliver better service, [other networks'] members and customers are going to defect. "There are pallet networks and then there's Palletline above them. The gap will only get bigger as a result of this investment." Armadale-based Drummond Distribution will join Palletline on 25 July, having moved from rival network Pall-Ex.