Pick And Pack Services UK
One pool of stock can serve your own website, your marketplaces and Amazon FBA at the same time, so you are not deciding months in advance how much inventory each channel gets.
What Our Customers Say About Us Excellence
We have over 110 clients from various countries. Read some of their reviews about our services.
"One of the best prep centre in UK. Using them for labelling and removal from amazon."
"My product was prepared in less than few hours and shipped on the same day. Highly recommended and 5 stars out of 5."
"We are using UK Prep Center from Nov 2022 and continue till now. They have prepared over 30k+ products for us. One of the best prep centre we ever found."
Pick, Pack And Dispatch From Sheffield, With The Rate Card Published
We hold your stock, pick and pack each order and get it to the courier. The same depot also preps stock for Amazon FBA, so one pool of inventory can serve your own website, your marketplaces and FBA at the same time. Our handling and packaging rates are published in full.
What is ecommerce fulfilment?
Ecommerce fulfilment is a third party storing your stock and shipping your orders. You send inventory once, they receive and store it, then pick, pack and dispatch each order as it comes in. You stop touching parcels and start buying warehouse space by the unit.
It is the step most sellers take when the spare room runs out, when they stop wanting to be home for the courier, or when returns start arriving faster than they can process them. The work itself is unglamorous: count what arrived, check it is not damaged, put it somewhere findable, and get the right item into the right box quickly enough.
What does pick and pack actually include?
Pick and pack means retrieving the exact items on an order from storage, packing them in suitable protective packaging, attaching the shipping label and handing the parcel to the courier. It covers the physical work between an order arriving and a parcel leaving.
| Stage | What happens | Why it goes wrong elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| Receiving | Count against what you said was coming, inspect condition, record size and weight | Skipping the count means you discover a short delivery weeks later, when the supplier will not credit it |
| Storage | Put away somewhere findable, tracked by SKU | Badly organised stock is the real cause of slow picking, not staffing |
| Picking | Retrieve the exact items and quantities on the order | Mispicks cause returns, refunds and marketplace defects, which cost far more than the pick did |
| Packing | Polybag, bubble wrap or carton depending on what the product needs | Under packing causes damage claims, over packing wastes money on every single order |
| Dispatch | Label, book the collection and hand it over | The gap between printing a label and the carrier scanning it is where dispatch metrics quietly fail |
| Returns | Receive, inspect, photograph damage, relabel what is resaleable | Returns left unprocessed are stock you have paid for and cannot sell |
What does ecommerce fulfilment cost in the UK?
Most fulfilment companies will not tell you before a sales call. We publish the lines we charge. Handling is 18p per unit received, polybagging is 25p, bubble wrap is 50p, and storage is £29 per CBM per month after the first 7 days under 1 CBM.
There is no monthly subscription fee on any package, which is the line worth checking anywhere else you get quoted. A monthly minimum means a slow January still costs you money. Here is what the published rates come to on the inbound side, for stock arriving and being made ready to ship.
| Units received per month | Handling at 18p | Polybagged at 25p | Inbound total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | £18.00 | £25.00 | £43.00 |
| 250 | £45.00 | £62.50 | £107.50 |
| 500 | £90.00 | £125.00 | £215.00 |
| 1,000 | £180.00 | £250.00 | £430.00 |
Worked from our published rate card. This is the inbound handling and packaging side. It excludes storage beyond the free allowance, courier postage, and per order dispatch, which we quote against your actual order volume and product because it depends heavily on both. Ask us and we will give you a number before you commit to anything. Full card on the pricing page.
What is a 3PL, and is that what you are?
3PL means third party logistics, a company that handles storage and shipping on your behalf. We are a small one. We do the storage, prep, pick, pack, dispatch and returns, from a single site in Sheffield.
What we are not is a large national network with regional warehouses and a software platform. If you need same day nationwide coverage from multiple sites, or deep automated integration into an enterprise stack, a bigger provider fits better and we will say so. What we do well is the part in between doing it yourself and signing a contract with a minimum spend.
How do orders actually reach you?
You send them to us. We do not currently run an automated order sync that pulls orders from your store, so orders come across by the method we agree when you set up, and we work from that.
We would rather tell you that upfront than have you find out in week two. It suits sellers with steady, manageable order counts and it does not suit a high volume operation that needs orders flowing in untouched. If automated integration is a hard requirement for you, say so when you get in touch and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.
When should you not use a fulfilment company?
If you ship a handful of orders a week, keep doing it yourself. Fulfilment adds a margin to every unit, and below a certain volume that margin buys you very little time back. The maths only turns in your favour once packing is eating hours you would rather spend selling.
It is also the wrong move if your product genuinely needs your hands on it, or if your range changes so fast that nothing sits still long enough to be worth storing. Nobody in this industry will tell you this, because every enquiry is revenue. It is still true, and you will work it out in month three anyway.
What makes this different from a standard 3PL?
Most 3PLs ship direct to customers but do not prep for Amazon FBA. Most prep centres do FBA but not direct to customer orders. We do both from the same stock, so you are not forecasting months ahead how much inventory each channel gets.
In practice that means one delivery from your supplier, one pool in our depot, and we send units wherever they are needed. Some go into Amazon with FNSKU labels and a booked pallet. Some go out as single parcels to customers. Some sit as buffer stock. You decide as you go instead of in advance, which is the part that actually saves money.
Which channels do you fulfil?
Your own website or Shopify store, Amazon FBA and FBM, eBay, TikTok Shop, and general ecommerce or dropship orders. The receiving, storage and picking is identical across all of them. What changes is the labelling standard and the dispatch deadline each channel enforces.
The channel specific detail lives on its own page: Amazon FBA prep, eBay fulfilment and TikTok Shop fulfilment, where the dispatch rules for each marketplace are set out properly.
What happens with returns?
Returns come back to our address. We open and inspect each one and tell you what is resaleable. Anything that can go back into stock is relabelled and put away. Anything that cannot is photographed so you have evidence for a claim.
We can also receive Amazon removal orders, which is useful when long term storage fees are about to bite or a listing is suppressed. That is £13.99 per month per SKU for up to 200 units of standard size stock.
Where are you and how do I start?
UK Prep Center LTD operates from Jordanthorpe, Sheffield S8 8DZ, near the M1 in the middle of the country, which keeps courier transit times short in both directions across the UK.
Message us on WhatsApp at +44 7777 451234 with your product type, monthly order volume, rough size and weight, and which channels you sell on. We will come back with a rate built from the published card and tell you plainly if we are not the right fit.
Jordanthorpe, Sheffield,
S8 8DZ, UK