A Dundee company that offered a £2,000 sign up bonus to attract more lorry drivers has hailed its success.
CJ Lang, which is the wholesaler for Spar Scotland, offered the bumper payment in response to a nationwide HGV driver shortage.
In addition to a £30,000 salary successful applicants were offered the cash incentive in Dundee and Inverness.
Chief executive Colin McLean said the move had worked – with an increase in driving staff to meet demand.
However, while pleased with the outcome, he said CJ Lang, which owns more than 100 Spar stores in Scotland, still needs more workers.
He said: “There is still a challenge out there about getting staff and I think it will continue.
“It’s not just drivers. We’re seeing the workforce right across Scotland has got a challenge.
“On the north coast there are some amazing locations. The challenge is getting labour in these areas to be able to operate the stores to the standards we want.
“The whole of the UK is facing that challenge.”
Replacing Post Office counters ‘not an easy decision’
Moving into next year, CJ Lang is investing a record-breaking amount to refurbish its Spar stores across the country.
They will be getting new flooring, lighting, refrigeration and electronic labels.
It has invested over £2 million to roll out its food-to-go offer CJ’s, which will be in the majority of stores by the end of this year.
In many locations, the new offer has moved into the space previously used by Post Office counters.
Mr McLean said the decision to close the counters was not easy.
“We’ve taken a difficult position and we faced into something that clearly we weren’t going to please people with,” he said.
“17 Post Offices we will continue to run across Scotland, but we have now come out of 25 of 31 Post Offices that we did announce. It’s not been easy.”
Retaining local costumers
CJ Lang saw its turnover grow to £212.5m for the year ending April 30 2021, up 9.4% on 2020. Pre-tax profit for the year was £3m.
It has an overall workforce of around 1,700 staff.
Finance director Craig Tedford said the business has worked hard the past three years to grow its top line.
He said: “We put our strategy in place three years ago now and remained true to it through the pandemic.
“The circumstances around Covid probably forced people to change their shopping habits and lots decided to shop locally.
“We want to maintain some of these customers that were required to shop locally and maybe hadn’t been for years, now that they’ve seen the offer we have within our stores.”