Warehousing agreements

Handing your stock to a warehouse means trusting another business with goods you still own and still need to sell. The arrangement often starts with a rate card and a shared understanding of the service. The difficulties arrive later: a stock count that does not match your records, orders picked wrongly at the busiest time of year, or a price rise you cannot easily refuse because moving the goods elsewhere would halt your deliveries.

A warehousing agreement governs a relationship that lasts, with goods coming in and going out every day and their owner rarely on site to see it. Getting it right means settling:

• the rules on the warehouse keeper’s duty of care, and on the conditions in which goods must be kept;
• the rules on receiving goods — counting and checking them on arrival, and recording what does not match;
• the rules on stock records, periodic counts and who bears an unexplained shortfall;
• the rules on warehouse receipts, pledging stored goods, and releasing them only to the person entitled;
• the rules on added services such as picking, packing, labelling and returns, and on liability for mistakes in them;
• the rules on allocating the risk of fire, flood and theft between the owner of the goods and the warehouse keeper;
• the rules on storage charges, committed space and goods left beyond the agreed term;
• the rules on ending the agreement, and on moving the goods to a new provider without interrupting supply.

Our lawyers can support you with this.