UFI Filters has begun a market offensive on the UK through which it hopes to win a 10% share of the aftermarket within three years. Key to its plans is a brand new 1000 square metre distribution centre in Redditch, just outside Birmingham.

UFI customers, including buying groups, independents and specialist motor factors, will benefit from a last order time of 5pm for next day delivery, guaranteed before 10am on orders with a value of £350 or over. Flexible minimum order values are also a feature of the new offering, especially for independent and specialist motor factors.

To support this initiative, UFI has partnered with Transmec, an international logistics company with experience in the automotive aftermarket parts sector. Orders will be filled from the distribution centre, where UFI will hold stock of over 200,000 parts, with 2,600 SKUs covering 96% of the UK car parc. Deliveries will be fully trackable and made overnight by carriers such as APC.

Competitive

Commenting on the new initiative UFI's newly-appointed aftermarket sales manager UK Karl Ridings says: "We are going to position ourselves with a very competitively priced product so it will attract the garages and all the buying groups.

"Our target customers are everybody. We need to talk to everybody to find out where they are in terms of existing filtration deals, but for us it's a blank sheet of paper and we have the whole of the UK to target.'

"The reason we have that target is that by 2020 our one goal is to be the third largest brand in the UK. The market is open for a brand like UFI to come in to be different, to be competitive.

The buying groups are very open to a brand like UFI. We have been trading for a few weeks now and we do have a few accounts open."

Great scope

According to Diego Buffoni, group aftermarket marketing and Europe sales director, UFI expects that the biggest challenge will be winning over motor factors: "Paradoxically, garages in the UK know better UFI than the factors because they find the co-branding. It is harder to come into the motor factors because they have a deal in place. We need to address that with different marketing activities. The strong battle will be to convince the motor factors."

Aftermarket Europe sales manager, Francesco Tomasoni adds: "The new warehouse and service standards will fully satisfy our existing and potential customers needs. We are confident that our offering will be well received, as a result, across the market. While the UK aftermarket is dominated by a few larger suppliers, it is also highly fragmented and there is great scope for a highly focused and innovative company such as ours to deliver something that is truly new."