In terms of road infrastructure, we welcome recent developments for the M74 extension and we can see the work on the M8 going on outside our distribution centre at Newhouse in Lanarkshire, which is also welcome.
On the focus on the A83, it provides a vital link to some of our community stores, which are obviously accessed via that road. We also welcome the proposal to dual the A9, which will certainly help, and the trial of the increased speed limit on the A9. As with the feedback that the Road Haulage Association presented to the committee last month, we are seeing benefits in that: for example, we can get fresh produce up to Caithness half an hour earlier. The structure of the supply chain in Scotland means that the Newhouse distribution centre is often at the end of a supply chain that starts in the English midlands, so the faster we can get fresh produce from Newhouse on to the shelf in Caithness so that customers can get it first thing in the morning, the better it is for us.
We therefore welcome the road improvements that I have described, but we would like to see a review of what is happening south of the border in terms of increased speed limits for large goods vehicles to see whether Scotland could do something similar. We appreciate that a cautious approach has been taken on the A9 because road safety is key, but I think that there have been some significant improvements there.
In terms of rail infrastructure, we currently bring product from Coventry in the English midlands to Mossend and to Grangemouth on slow-moving ambient lines for grocery transport, and we use W H Malcolm to do that. That service has been really good in terms of reliability. However, we would like to see provision of a full seven-day service. That is one of the things that are critical and I do not think that it has come up in previous evidence to the committee.
There has been a lot of evidence about rail, but one of the key issues for United Kingdom freight routes—as opposed to just those in Scotland—is that there is no provision for Saturday night services on key routes. I understand that that is mostly to do with engineering. However, if there was a move to make alternative and diversionary routes available on Saturday nights—if we could get more of a 24/7 operation—we would have more opportunity to move volume on to rail and away from road. We can run for six days and that is fine. The problem is the Saturday evenings.
Lead times are very important in the grocery industry, so if we can reduce lead times between the system placing orders for stores and the products being on the shelves, the accuracy of the orders will be improved and the availability to the end customer will be as good as it can be.