Smart moves: How Smart UK re-engineered an EV-only supply chain for scale
At Automotive Logistics & Supply Chain UK 2026, Smart UK's Stephanie Budd shared how the brand rebuilt its China-to-UK finished vehicle pipeline, before joining an OEM-and-carrier panel on the capacity, EV-weight and forecasting challenges facing UK vehicle logistics.
Stephanie Budd, UK sales planning and logistics manager, Smart UKSource: Automotive Logistics
Smart UK, a heritage brand relaunched in the UK four years
ago, sells an all-electric range built in China, with no legacy network to fall
back on. Stephanie Budd, the brand's UK sales planning and logistics manager,
joined two years ago to help re-optimise the company’s supply chain. In her
keynote, she outlined how the company has built its logistics network to
support growth while navigating the rolling
disruption that has reshaped finished vehicle logistics on both sides of the
Atlantic.
Key session takeaways
Port storage: UK port storage runs near
capacity year-round, removing the traditional end-of-Q2 build-up window and
keeping storage costs high.
EV weight: Heavier electric cars reduce
transporter load factors, prompting carriers to invest in new equipment and
lobby for changes to axle-weight limits.
Market outlook: S&P Global Mobility
put the UK market at around 2.4m and holding flat, down from a peak of roughly
3.1m, with the SMMT reporting Chinese-origin brands above 18% of new-car
registrations.
Investment risk: A car transporter now
costs around £300,000, up from roughly £175,000 pre-Covid, making carriers
cautious about expanding capacity if current demand proves temporary.
Contracts: OEM and carrier speakers
favoured long-term contracts over short tenders as the basis for investment and
driver retention.
Decarbonisation: HVO and electric trucks
are already in use but remain costly and grid-constrained, with speakers
calling for a clearer government policy roadmap.
A build-to-stock market with three sharp constraints
Budd's starting point was the structural reality every UK
OEM is wrestling with. "The biggest challenge in the UK is that we are a
build-to-stock market," she said. "It's critical to have the right
stock in the right place," she added, and to move it in a competitive
window.
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Three pressures bore down on that goal. The first was driver
and trucking capacity: post-Brexit, the UK has fewer drivers, and the shortfall
bites hardest in the peaks. The second was inherited from the brand's original
set-up – the shipping agent it used offered Smart access to just one sailing a
week, largely because the vessel belonged to another OEM. As a low-volume new
entrant, Smart could not always secure space even on that single weekly slot.
The third was port storage: a wave of new entrants has poured volume into the
UK without any matching increase in capacity at the ports, driving storage into
permanent high demand – and driving up its cost.
The old pipeline
The legacy flow ran from the factory in China by deep sea to
one of two ports in Belgium, letting Smart flex between ro-ro and container
shipping as rates moved. From there, cars routed via Zeebrugge to the UK;
vehicles landing at Antwerp were trucked up, held in a bonded warehouse and
moved to the UK on a T1 document once a week – if there was space on the boat.
On arrival they went into Smart's storage area, then out to agents, a final leg
that could take up to seven to ten working days.
The challenges compounded one another: vessel capacity was
never guaranteed; unreliable arrival times; and high, in-demand UK storage
costs. Additionally, to cover the September peak during the agent's August
dry-docking period, Smart had to build stock in June and July, adding
significant storage costs.
The redesign
Budd ran a full tender, grounded in benchmarking from her
time at other OEMs and an exhaustive supplier search. "I think I went to
every port in the country over two months and visited lots of trucking
agents," she said. The partner Smart chose offered daily chartered
sailings. Because the service also carries non-automotive freight, it runs
regardless of Smart's volumes, removing the need to hold excess UK stock
against missed weekly departures.
As a result, storage shifts to Zeebrugge, where it is
cheaper. And it unlocks what Budd called "over-the-horizon" load
building – the trucking agent builds loads and ships them only once cars are
sold. "We're not importing into the country until they are sold, and we're
getting some cash coming back into the bank," she explained, with vehicles
held in bond and moved on a T1 to ease tariff handling. Smart layered on
further efficiencies: a north-south split that routes a car sold in the north
through a northern port to cut pence-per-mile costs, and a willingness to share
trucking with customers' suppliers rather than wait for a full load – lifting
delivery speed while trimming cost.
The result
Today the upstream leg looks much as it did, but the
shipping model is transformed. Daily sailings now serve both ports; on arrival,
cars move through the SPR into load lanes and straight onto trucks. Smart can
get "a car discharged from the vessel into an agent within 24 hours."
Over-the-horizon load building also gives agents an exact delivery date, so
they can schedule PDI and customer handover in advance.
"This is scalable for Smart," Budd said. "We
have good growth aspirations within the UK, and my job is to make sure that the
supply chain is set up correctly to accommodate that growth moving
forward." She closed on the product to come, teasing a concept car
unveiled weeks earlier at the Beijing Motor Show and a nameplate from the
brand's past due to return next year.
The realities of UK finished vehicle logistics
Budd's keynote fed directly into the panel session that
followed, "Rethinking finished vehicle logistics: sustainable, visible and
competitive imports, exports and domestic distribution," where she was
joined by Awais Ajmal,
supply chain general manager at Kia UK, and Nigel Glenn, managing director of BCA
Automotive.
Nigel Glenn, managing director, BCA Automotive (right), Awais Ajmal, supply chain general manager, Kia (centre), Stephanie Budd, UK sales planning and logistics manager, Smart UK (left)Automotive Logistics
Capacity and market size
Both Ajmal and Glenn traced today's capacity strains to
Covid, when smaller subcontractors went out of business and transportation
capacity fell away fast – with the survivors prioritising resilience over fleet
expansion. Dealers and retailers have since surrendered space, ports are
"absolutely rammed" with a growing share of product arriving from
China, and inland storage has been repurposed. The result, Glenn argued, is a
structural squeeze made worse by uncertainty over where the market actually
lands. At the conference, S&P Global Mobility's Henner Lehne put the UK's
total market at around 2.4m and holding flat, down from a peak of roughly 3.1m.
SMMT, in a separate keynote, set out who is increasingly filling it:
Chinese-origin vehicles have pushed past 18% of UK new-car registrations, in an
import-dominated market where nine in ten new cars are built abroad – and where
the UK, unlike the EU, has applied no anti-dumping or anti-subsidy measures to
slow them.
"If we all invest tens of millions of pounds, I think
it will be a very tough place if we go back to a 1.9 million market straight
afterwards," Glenn added, noting a transporter now costs around £300,000
against roughly £175,000 pre-Covid. Forecasting was a recurring theme, but Budd
stressed that plans can only account for so much. With market conditions able
to change rapidly, as seen with the
EV grant, agility remains essential.
The logistics realities of EVs
As an all-electric manufacturer, Budd flagged the discipline
EVs demand in transit: "The most important thing is maintenance of the
stock throughout the supply chain," keeping batteries above a set charge
at every stage. Glenn shared that EVs run roughly 20-30% heavier, and the pinch
falls on small cars, not large ones: "with a big car we run out of space,
with a small car we run out of weight." BCA began addressing the issue in
2019, lobbying on axle-weight regulations and investing in around 150 trucks to
maintain load factors. "The key is they're heavy," Glenn said. Kia,
meanwhile, has invested in charging infrastructure to ensure vehicles arrive at
dealerships fully charged, reducing handover preparation and supporting its
expanding EV portfolio.
Investment requires certainty
With a limited pool of UK finished vehicle logistics
providers and continued pricing pressure from new entrants, all three speakers
highlighted the importance of long-term contracts. Ajmal argued that short-term
tenders discourage investment in equipment, infrastructure and people. Glenn
agreed, noting that securing financing for new assets on the back of a one-year
contract is difficult. Longer-term agreements, he said, encourage greater
commitment from both parties. Ajmal also stressed the importance of contract
stability in retaining drivers, many of whom left the sector for general
haulage during and after the pandemic.
Awais Ajmal, supply chain general manager, KiaAutomotive Logistics
Decarbonisation goals
On sustainability, Ajmal summed up the policy reality:
"the destination is clear, but how we get there is not very clear,"
with OEMs needing a firmer government roadmap and the rest of the chain –
ports, carriers – pulled in alongside. Budd looks for suppliers with their own
green initiatives, accepting that sustainability sometimes costs more and has
to be a joint investment. Glenn said the first steps are improving fill rates,
load factors and routing, because "the less miles that we drive, the less
fumes we're going to pump out." HVO can reduce emissions but "it's
not cheap", while electric trucks work well in some short-haul
applications but remain constrained by charging infrastructure and grid
capacity. "There will be a place for EV trucks and they will come,"
he said, but widespread adoption is still some way off.
Confidence, capacity and growth
Closing out, Ajmal urged the room to keep the customer's
voice in every logistics decision: delivering isn't only about efficiency but
about hitting the promised date – "if the promise state is wrong, then
you've let down a customer, even if it's wrong by a day" – and that means
trusting partners enough to share bad news as well as good. He also flagged
perception risk around isolated EV-related truck fires, stressing that
"trying to keep the confidence up in the country and in the market is very
important." Glenn returned to the market-size unknown as his number-one
concern, with "double movement" from ports to inland compounds eating
the very capacity it's meant to relieve after "a very, very tough first
two quarters." Budd circled back to her keynote: with the right foundation
now in place, the focus is on deepening supplier relationships and scaling.
