Following a prolonged period of investment across Thomas Ridley’s 100k square foot storage and distribution site, which includes 20k square foot of frozen warehouse space, the Suffolk-based foodservice company has now achieved the BRCS globally-recognised certification for storage and distribution.
Thomas Ridley has always been committed to providing a quality service for its wide range of education, healthcare, leisure and hospitality customers, and is now very proud to have achieved the sought-after BRCS status for the first time.
The most rigorous third-party certification of its kind, taking lots of hard work and preparation to achieve, this standard is designed to build confidence in the supply chain and assure customers that all products are safe, legal and of high quality.
Mark Murphy, Executive Logistics Manager at Thomas Ridley, tells Wholesale Manager what the firm had to do to achieve BRC accreditation and what was the most challenging part of the process.
Thomas Ridley has now become BRC certified. You were very much involved in that project, weren’t you?
I was indeed, yes, I led the team through that process.
Was does it mean to be BRC certified?
It is the gold standard for our industry. When I started in this business we didn’t have that. We had other accreditations but I was keen to get BRC because it’s more widely recognised and a lot of our bigger customers require that. So if we get new business and we have BRC in hand they are assured that we are doing everything as we should be doing. It is quite a rigorous process to go through.
What do you have to do to achieve BRC accreditation?
You have to follow 10 stages which you get audited on, sections 1-10. We were originally SA Global and SDS certified, so that’s two independent certifications, and we are ISO 90001. So we looked at BRC and asked is this compatible with everything we do, which it is. But the transition from ISO to BRC was quite a challenge because a lot of our document control was geared towards ISO. Whereas ISO is more your document control versus your operational do’s and don’ts, what we say is what we do and if you don’t you are not getting certified. They are quite clear about that sort of stuff. So we have done a lot of business gauges, a lot of upgrades within the warehouse, the infrastructure, people’s training, investment in our people, that is all part and parcel of this whole process.
How long did the process take?
It took us 18 months from start to finish.
What changes did you make to the warehouse?
We re-laid our warehouse to make it a more logical flow through the warehouse because you have to demonstrate you have got a flow through every part of the operation, from goods-in/goods-out, your waste controls, your people controls – controlling where people come and go around machinery. It is more prescriptive on that side of things than previous audits. There is a lot of training going on with that sort of stuff.
What specific training did you give to your staff regarding this process?
We put all our frontline managers from team leaders upwards through HACCP levels 2 and 3 of basic hygiene training. We retrained all our people in food safety, which should be done every three years anyway but we scaled that up and made it more to the BRC standard which is a bit more detailed than other audits, ensuring people know the full process of food safety. There was also all the manual handling stuff, you have to demonstrate you are compliant by legislation law and what we say we are going to do. We have got 75 different training modules for our warehouse staff. That has to be demonstrated and kept up to date with the training or you fail.
A lot of BRC is being very prescriptive in the standard and you must comply to the standard. So it does hone us into being very good at what we do.
What was the most challenging part of the process for you?
It was writing up a lot of the new processes as per the standard. It is very prescriptive, if it says something you must do, then you must do that. It was about changing people’s attitude towards being of a higher standard, that’s what the training is. People get to know why we are doing this. It improves the business and it improves how people see it, we didn’t have BRC before and we have got it now. People can see we are improving, not that we weren’t doing good stuff before but it gives us that gold standard.
How have you made improvements to your operational efficiencies and processes regarding energy consumption and recycling?
We ripped all the warehouse lights out, which was around 1800 light units. We took them all out and put LED motion detection lights in. That reduced the light consumption by about 6000kW a month, which is huge. We installed rapid action doors in our freezer and in our chillers. Before we had manual doors, which are very old hat so we put rapid action doors in, there is no manual intervention. It opens, the van drives through and it closes. That saves 2,500kW a month. We are on target for a 10% energy saving by the end of the year. We use about 2.1 million kW a year so we are trying to get that under 2 million. We are on target as long as we don’t have a very hot winter, we are relying on the weather to be a bit colder.
What kind of clients does Thomas Ridley serve?
We serve anything in the catering industry, predominantly schools, care homes, hospitality, independent traders, wholesale traders. A lot of it is the care industry, healthcare and education. There is also leisure, takeaways, pubs, restaurants, cafes and coffee shops.
How can caterers order from Thomas Ridley – by phone or do you have an online platform?
We have a website that caterers can order from and we will deliver the following day. We have an additional e-commerce platform. Or people can call our telesales teams and place orders for next day delivery.
How many products are in Thomas Ridley’s range?
8,400.
Does Thomas Ridley run promotional programmes? How often do they run and how many products are included in the programmes?
We have a bi-monthly promotional offer called What’s Cooking, a little booklet we send out. There are around 200 offers in there.
What geographical areas does Thomas Ridley deliver to?
We are based in East Anglia and we deliver to London and the South East, down as far as Brighton.
How much warehousing space do you have?
20,000 square feet in the freezer and 80,000 square feet ambient and chilled. We have two sites and we have a satellite depot in Paddock Wood, Kent.
How many vehicles do you have in your fleet and are they multi-temperature vehicles?
We have 68 vehicles in our fleet, ranging from vans to 18 and 26 tonne vehicles. They are all multi-temperature vehicles. We have got six new vehicles in the last couple of weeks.
How many staff does Thomas Ridley employ?
250.
Is there any news from Thomas Ridley?
Bidcorp bought us out at the beginning of the year. We are part of their estate but still run as an independent company. The plan is to focus on our customers, it’s all about the customer service, which we are pretty good at as compared to our competitors we are in the top two. We try and run our customer service levels at 99%. We now get the Caterfood own label range, one of the biggest names in catered food.
What has the acquisition by Bidcorp meant for the Thomas Ridley business? What changes have been made?
There is no change, we have been very much left alone to run as an independent company. The advantage of being bought by such a big group is, when we want to invest it is not a family pocket we are dipping into, it is the corporation who will back us. I will get what I need to improve the site, improve the service and just keep moving forward.
Is there anything else you want to add?
We are zero to landfill. Any waste food goes to charity, either foodbank or waste power, that converts waste to energy. Plastics and cardboard are recycled, almost 200 tonnes of cardboard have been recycled so far this year, plus 300,000 litres of cooking oil. Customers get the benefit from that because we pay them per litre that we collect from them. And we have recycled 50 tonnes of plastic this year.
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