Our Milton Keynes warehouse is not a customs warehouse and does not take uncleared goods. We declare no warehouse certifications. We do not run retail order picking, parcel despatch to end customers, consumer returns handling or unit-level sales labelling. What we do run is pallet handling, short-term storage, cargo inspection and recovery, storage in temperature zones and transhipment, around the clock.
We do not operate a customs warehouse
This is the most frequent question and the answer is no. Our site in Milton Keynes does not operate as a customs warehouse, so goods cannot wait there with duty or tax suspended. The arrangement itself can be useful and we explain it in what a customs warehouse is, but if your plan rests on deferring liabilities, you need a site with a different status from ours. We say so openly, because a client who learns this halfway through a project loses more than one who heard it in the first conversation.
Goods enter only after import clearance
A consequence of the point above. A load must have its customs status settled before it stands in our warehouse, so clearance happens on the route rather than with us. Why that order is the only one available, and how to plan the delivery day around it, is covered in why goods enter the warehouse only after import clearance. The procedure and document preparation are on the customs clearance page.
We declare no certifications
We publish no list of warehouse certifications, because we do not want to imply a status we could not produce on request. If your receiver requires a specific accreditation of the storage site, say so at the start: either we find a solution elsewhere in the chain, or we tell you plainly that the requirement cannot be met with us. That is more honest than silence followed by a surprise during a customer audit. What we do describe in detail is how each piece of work is performed, and that part can be verified on the first job.
We do not run e-commerce fulfilment or consumer returns handling
Our operating unit is the pallet and the outer carton, not a single product in a courier box. That one premise produces the whole list of things we do not do:
- we do not pick retail orders unit by unit and we do not despatch parcels to end customers;
- we do not receive or scan individual return parcels from end customers, so our address does not go into Amazon Seller Central, or any other shop, as a returns address;
- we do not sort returned items by condition and we do not put them back into sellable stock one unit at a time;
- we do not label individual selling units: GS1 barcodes on the product and FNSKU labels for Amazon sit outside our scope;
- we do not prepare consignments for Amazon FBA.
Those steps stay with the client or with their parcel or prep operator. We start where the goods already stand on a pallet: we receive and release pallets, hold them in short-term storage, examine and document their condition, restack and stabilise the load, apply SSCC pallet labels and outer-carton markings, consolidate the EU-bound return load with the customs side handled, and dispose of whatever cannot be recovered, with confirmation. How the roles split across a whole reverse flow is set out in our article on returns and reverse logistics from the UK. If you sell online and need parcel operations, you need an operator of a different profile; our warehouse works well as the buffer feeding that operator.
We do not publish site parameters
We publish no floor area, no pallet-space count and no team size. Not because those are embarrassing, but because numbers of that kind get read as a promise of throughput, and throughput depends on the rhythm and type of load rather than on square metres. To the question of whether we can take a hundred pallets next Tuesday we give a specific answer after checking occupancy, and that answer is worth more than any figure in a brochure.
We do not rule on the quality of goods
In inspection and segregation we apply criteria supplied by the goods owner and do not stand in for them commercially. We issue no opinion on whether a product meets a specification, we do not pronounce on fitness for consumption, and we do not decide on disposal by ourselves. Our role is establishing facts, documenting them and carrying out the decision. The mechanics are described in damaged goods in the warehouse.
So what do we actually do
We receive and release pallets, run short-term storage as a buffer between arrival and onward delivery and while a batch is being built up, store at ambient and in chilled and frozen zones, restack and stabilise loads, run emergency transhipment, inspect damaged and contaminated cargo with photographic documentation, filter batches into saleable and unsaleable units, carry out temperature-controlled recovery, apply UV inspection and decontamination, and perform disposal with a destruction confirmation. We work around the clock. The full scope is on the Milton Keynes warehouse page, and what the site solves as an operating point in the warehouse as a UK operating address.
Why the list of exclusions is shorter than the list of services
Because we have written down only the things clients actually ask about and actually build plans on. Listing everything a warehouse does not do would have neither an end nor a point. If you have a requirement outside both lists, ask directly. An answer saying we do not do something comes as quickly here as confirmation that we can, and both are worth the same when planning.
Have a requirement we did not mention? Ask directly through the quote form. If we do not do something, you will hear it straight away rather than after signing.
