It’s Time To Celebrate, The Food and Drink Supply Chain Excellence Award

20th November 2020

On 12^th November 2020 a virtual ceremony took place to announce the winners of the Supply Chain Awards. The awards have been running for 23 years and are organised by Logistics Manager magazine. The virtual awards had, understandably, replaced the Gala Dinner at Hilton Park Lane. Although, that did not deter the fun to be had and the warmth of receiving an award, to be felt.

Futura Foods won in the Food and Drink Supply Chain excellence category along with our partners Simply Supply Chain. Awarded for the work completed in developing and championing ‘Good Faith Receiving’ into retail distribution centres over the last few years through the drive and drop initiative. ‘Good Faith Receiving’ is where the goods received are presumed to be present and correct and a portion of these are audited to validate accuracy.

Before the initiative began, retail customers had implemented Drop and Drive into all of their distribution centres. Drop and Drive means that all suppliers delivering stock leave it with the distribution centre to check at their leisure. As a result of this initiative claims for shortages were costing many chilled suppliers money and time for investigations in order to settle these, often unsubstantiated, claims fairly.

Futura is a member of the Drop and Drive workgroup which is a collection of chilled suppliers including Ornua, Pepsico, Arla, Moy Park and many more. The workgroup was formed by Simply Supply Chain in conjunction with Culina Logistics in 2014, with the aim of tackling these issues. Simply Supply Chain gained the confidence and input from the Grocery Code Adjudicator, which enabled the process to run.

Over six years, through many workshops and supply chain events, with representatives from the retailer supply chain teams, we were able to identify improvements to some processes and also initiatives such as improving case and pallet labelling to enable retailer distribution centres to clearly differentiate between different orders, packs and products.

The confidence this gave to retailers, alongside their own initiatives to meet their commitments to the Grocery Code, has led to many of them adopting Good Faith Receiving. Under this the retailer pays the supplier in full for everything that is delivered and invoiced. The retailer then uses an independent audit company to check a proportion of the orders to get an overall accuracy figure. This is then applied to all deliveries for each quarter.

At Futura we have seen a reduction in claims numbers, increased accuracy in picking orders and improved strength in our relationships with retailers. Long may this continue.