Cawleys and Adelie Food Group Win CIPS

Published - Friday, 16 September, 2011

‘Win emphasises waste management role as more than a routine purchase,’  says Adelie procurement director

Cawleys environmental consultancy division, WasteSolve, in partnership with its client Adelie, last night (14.09.11) scooped the top award, Best Supplier Relationship Management, in the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) Awards.

Sebastien Hernandez, group procurement director at Adelie, which employs over 2,500 staff and produces 1.8  million fresh sandwiches and 425,000 fruit packs per week to the ‘Food-To-Go’ market,  set the challenge to introduce radical innovation to the organisation’s approach to waste management, and Cawleys delivered that result.

Under Sebastien’s leadership, Adelie made the key procurement decision to treat supply waste as a strategic category requiring proper analysis, rather than a routine purchase. Choosing a supplier with the right culture to deliver the strategy and make the relationship work was vital.
Seb comments: “We adopted a Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) regime which allowed us to make the leap from routine to strategic, treating waste as an opportunity and not a chore. WasteSolve had the creativity and the capacity to make it happen.”

Kate Cawley, Business Development Manager at Cawleys explains:
“Sebastien allowed us to get under the skin of each site and really understand what was going on.  What excited us was the opportunity we saw for going beyond zero waste for landfill.”

With the waste recovery rates currently being achieved, Adelie will surpass the target of eighty per cent reduction of landfill by the end of 2011, positioning the group to achieve the 2012 target of zero to landfill well ahead of schedule.

The judges commented about the entry and the relationship: “Intelligent, smart from a business perspective and gives relevance to the triple bottom line argument in a squeezed business world.”

It was a double celebration for Adelie, which also won the award for ‘Most Improved Purchasing Operation (Start Up.)

Kate concludes:
“By providing a ‘best in class’ service to Adelie we have created an approach which is helping our business to grow too. It is a great example of a genuine working partnership, and for the industry as a whole proof that the ‘closed loop’ of waste management between supplier, retailer and consumer can be achieved.”