Traders at London's New Covent Garden Market have raised fears of major upheaval and lost business due to the restrictions of the Olympic Route Network (ORN).
As FPJ reported last week, the ORN passes by the market with police also set to be stationed at the flower market. Night-time restrictions in central London during the Olympics and Paralympics limit use of the ORN to between midnight and 6am.
That narrow time period raises the spectre of traders at all three London produce markets, plus those delivering other products vying for a limited number of customers' delivery slots, according to Richard Hickson, MD of Premier Fruits.
“Suppliers will be fighting among themselves,” he said. “From a catering point of view we are suffering a bit with it. One of our firms is looking at dropping [staff working hours] back 12 hours. It's a massive upheaval and we've having to uproot our entire operation.”
Premier Fruits' logistics manager Bill Singh added that the company would have to rethink the way it supplies its catering customers. “The ORN is really going to hurt,” he said. “The 12-6am restriction is simply not workable. We make deliveries to 200 drops - how do you work in a six-hour window?”
The situation is challenging where customers do not provide keys, he explained. “We have sent out a circular asking for responses but some customers are not even thinking about it. We will have to say to some customers that we can't deliver to them unless they accommodate us….I'm taking the next two weeks to get a formulated plan in place.”
A spokeswoman for landlord the Covent Garden Market Authority agreed that it is outward deliveries that are likely to be affected: “For example it is those second deliveries that won’t happen. The bulk of deliveries are already made before 7am,but it will be a case of being out and back before 6am. That sounds fine, but no one really knows what it is going to be like until it happens. Everyone is looking at what can be done around route planning, and if delivery times have to be shifted, that will have an impact on staffing levels and times for tenants.”
But Singh is worried that some smaller customers may not understand why deliveries cannot be made and business will inevitably be lost.
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