Cornflakes will soon be arriving at shops with loo rolls, thanks to the cost of fuel. In the face of rising fuel costs and mounting environmental concerns, Kellogg's and Kimberly-Clark have struck a deal to share deliveries.

Under the arrangement, Kellogg's cereals will be distributed along with Kimberly-Clark's healthcare and hygiene brands, such as Andrex and Huggies nappies. The deal will save 270,000 lorry miles per year — the equivalent of approximately ten trips around the world.

Troy Warfield, the managing director of Kimberly-Clark in Britain, said that the move made sense because both products were bulky and, therefore, expensive to transport. Cereals and tissues require the same kind of “high cube” lorry, so the two companies are sharing distribution centres in Northfleet, in Kent, and Manchester for stores, typically convenience chains, that previously would have been served by lorries and vans less than half-full. Mr Warfield said: “There are 75 billion empty truck miles across Europe — think of the wasted CO2 emissions. It came out of us thinking: 'How do we get a smarter supply chain and get more trucks off the road?'”

TDG, the logistics provider, enabled the deal, which was trailed at Kimberly-Clark's distribution centre in Northfleet and will be introduced at Kellogg's Manchester warehouse. Colin Ridler, the supply chain director of Kellogg's, said that Kimberly-Clark products would take up 10 per cent of the warehouse in Manchester. “There's been a lot of talk about distribution sharing schemes in theory for quite a while, but TDG have made it happen.” He added that the two companies, and TDG, intend to introduce the scheme elsewhere in the country. The move should also prove popular with retailers, who will have to cope with fewer deliveries, and will help to boost on-shelf availability.

Mr Warfield said that the issue of availability had been a thorn in the side of Kimberly-Clark. Volumes tend to be static over time when it comes to toilet paper and nappies. So the company has focused on making sure that products are available when a customer walks into a shop.

A survey commissioned by Kimberly-Clark found that on a Friday evening as much as 20 per cent of large supermarkets were out of stock of Andrex. “We needed to make the business realise that it makes sense for stores to keep our goods on their shelves,” Mr Warfield said. The company has increased its availability by 1.7 per cent to 96.2 per cent — representing precious sales in a static market.

As well as the distribution deal with Kellogg's, Kimberly-Clark has taken more prosaic measures to increase a customer's chances of finding its loo roll. Adding 50 per cent to a loo roll increases its diameter by only 10 per cent, he pointed out. Which means that a shopkeeper can get a lot more toilet paper on his shelf and into his back store. And it means that they can pack a lot more of them on a lorry.

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