Divisions - UPD Distribution Centres

New UPD operates five fully compliant, integrated and profitable distribution centres in South Africa. These are located in Lea Glen in Gauteng, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth. In addition to this, five forwarding hubs function from East London, George, Mokopane (Potgietersrus), Nelspruit and Witbank.

The company’s export division, UPEX services other Southern African countries from forwarding hubs in Gabarone and Windhoek. In January 2008, New UPD acquired a 90% stake in Kalahari Medical Distributors and now operates from Gabarone.

Lea Glen Pharma DC

By focusing on continued improvement in operating efficiencies, New UPD further advances its quest to quickly and accurately respond to its customers’ needs. The R45-million investment in its Lea Glen warehouse automation means that operating efficiency has been enhanced by largely replacing the manual inventory picking process. This results in time-savings, fewer errors and ensures a more compliant process. Security around medicines has also been heightened because most manual interventions have been eliminated.

The 20250m² distribution centre is located in Lea Glen, Roodepoort. Of that, 16250m² is used for Wholesale and Distribution and 4000m² for Pharma DC. It is fully compliant and has an 86% Ethical, 9% Patent & 5% Distribution product split. The DC carries approximately 13752 line items, managed by over 360 staff. Lea Glen DC offers twice per day delivery locally and once per day into Country area’s with UPD branded fleet. Lea Glen boasts over 2000 active customers, processing at least 95000 orders per month.

Durban DC

The UPD Durban Distribution Centre is strategically situated in New Germany, with easy access to N2 and N3 Highway as well as to M13, M19 and M7 highways, enabling us to deliver speedily to our customers. We carry an extensive range of Ethical and Patent products, some 13000 products in our 3500m² warehouse. We offer two deliveries a day to all areas in Kwa Zulu Natal, except to Newcastle and Vryheid where we offer one delivery a day. We also service the Eastern Cape up to Umtata once daily. We service over 200 customers on a daily basis.

Port Elizabeth DC

The UPD Port Elizabeth Distribution Center is well situated in the central business area, North End, with easy access to the N2 and M3 highways, enabling us to be on the road to outlying cities or towns within 10 minutes and local areas within 5 minutes. This allows us to deliver to the local customers twice per day as well as the Garden Route and surroundings and the Border area and surroundings. Further outlying areas of the Eastern Cape and Garden Route area receive deliveries once per day.

We carry an extensive range of Ethical and Patent products in our 3000m² warehouse and have access to the Cape Town stock file allowing us to have stock on site less than 24 hours for delivery. We have a client base of  over 350 active customers.

Cape Town DC

Our 6000m² Cape Town Distribution Centre is located in Montague Gardens. 3500m² is utilised for Wholesale and 2500m² for Distribution. It is a fully compliant DC carrying approximately 13 000 line items, processing over 70 000 order per month with over 1200 active customers.

Cape Town has a 83% Ethical, 12% Patent and 5% Distribution Product Contribution split. We offer twice daily local deliveries and once per day deliveries in country areas using UPD's branded fleet.

Bloemfontein DC

The 2500m² Bloemfontein Distribution Centre carries approximately 10 836 products, consisting of 4913 ethicals and 5923 patents.

Bloemfontein DC services the Free State and Northern Cape areas on a daily basis – from Harrismit in Eastern Free State to Kakamas in the Northern Cape; and from Viljoenskroon in Northern Free State to Aliwal North in the South. UPD Bloemfontein services the following customer base – hospitals, pharmacies, doctors and health shops.

Service levels – BFN; Kroonstad; Welkom; Kimberley – 2 x deliveries per day. All other towns – overnight delivery.

We are proud of our service levels and boast about our late cut off’s – i.e. customers can order till 18:00 daily in most areas and receive a delivery next morning. We offer a “regret order system” to all our customers – whereby we will supply overnight a product from our JHB branch in Lea Glen to BFN  - should we not be able to fill the order in BFN.