The new centre at Blanchardstone, County Dublin, means direct-to-store deliveries by suppliers are being phased out in favour of more frequent and better tailored requirements from the new site.

All elements of the centre's operation, except the chill store, were tested since day one of the pilot phase, and successive phases have added a greater number of suppliers and goods into the equation.

Supply chain manager Declan Carolan said: 'The pilot phase tested five key things: our supply chain systems, in-store stock control, in-store computer systems, our back-office processes, and our warehouse-management system.

'Now that we have established that these things work, we can gradually build up the amount of goods that are being processed through them.' He added: 'We also had to test the operational procedures within the distribution centre, those of our suppliers and our shops. During phase one everything proved to be stable – we had no major teething problems and our suppliers were satisfied with what we call PAOS: product availability on shelf. We, of course, we're satisfied too.

'It was improved PAOS that was the main reason for investing in the distribution centre in the first place. PAOS during phase one was 99.3 per cent, the remaining 0.7 per cent of which was due to supplier product unavailability – the best we could achieve with direct to store delivery was 95 per cent.' Deliveries to Superquinn shops stand at three per week but this will increase to six when the distribution centre is fully on stream.

The difference to shops in having deliveries from the distribution centre is considerable. Goods now come in mixed roll cage deliveries, meaning the right amount of different products are supplied rather than one week's worth of palletised products.

'It's too early for solid figures,' said Carolan, 'but our stores are all reporting improved replenishment rates which should lead to improved sales. It is clear that the distribution centre products are more available now than the direct-to-store delivery ones.'