SOCIETY
Sustainable fishing
Sligro Food Group has its own fish production business, SmitVis, and so our responsibility within this product chain extends further than for many other products in our range, while we also have greater opportunities in and control over the activities. Smit-Vis is a market leader from a sustainable fishing perspective, and this is a position we intend to maintain.
It is important for us to be able to supply fish in a sustainable manner that complies with internationally recognised standards such as those of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). This is an independent, international non-profit organisation that seeks to reduce overfishing throughout the world. The Council has set the only worldwide standard for sustainable fishing, and this is consistent with the UN guidelines in this respect. The blue MSC ecolabel guarantees that fish are caught and managed in accordance with sustainable fishing standards and come from healthy, sustainable stocks. Sligro Food Group received MSC accreditation in September 2008 and is, therefore, the first fish supplier in the Netherlands to be MSC-accredited in foodservice and food retail.
Foie Gras
Our initial contacts with Four Paws Netherlands, an international animal welfare organisation operating in the Netherlands under its legal name of Stichting Vier Voeters, date back to 2007. The organisation campaigns against, for example, the method commonly used to produce foie gras. We used the organisation’s ‘black list’ of producers in France and Hungary when selecting our suppliers of this product. We have agreed with the organisation that we will seek to include sustainable alternatives in our product range. In 2008 we were able to find a sustainable and animal-friendly alternative sold under the Eendenlever Fin name. The liver for this pâté does not come from specially fattened ducks, but instead from Barbary ducks that are bred purely for their meat and so not force-fed. These products can be recognised by the label on the packaging that states that the liver is not from force-fed ducks (in Dutch: “Lever van niet vetgemeste eenden”). In this way we are also able to offer our customers the opportunity to select foie gras from a sustainably produced source.
Edible insects, Bugs Organic Food
The Bugs Organic Food project has been actively promoting edible insects as a source of food in the Dutch market since January 2008. Given the world’s growing population and the rising demand for meat in countries such as China and India, consumption of meat products is expected to double by 2050. However, 70% of the world’s agricultural land is already being used for meat production. The growing demand for meat will in future no longer be able to be met from conventional sources. Eating insects has various environmental benefits, with the most important three being space, more efficient conversion of feedstuff into meat and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
Collaboration between the Dutch scientific community, production companies, wholesalers and the hospitality sector to promote edible insects has progressed further than anywhere else in the world. Insects are a rich source of protein and so an excellent alternative to meat and fish. The Bugs Organic Food project has been initiated by our poultry and game company, Ruig Wild & Gevogelte, together with three insect breeders in the Netherlands and Wageningen University. The Sligro wholesale outlets provide a nationwide sales network for these products.
Intervention policy of Food and Consumer
Product Safety Authority Businesses are responsible for the safety and quality of their products and for complying with legislation and regulations. The supervision performed by the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority will in future take more explicit account of this responsibility. This means, for example, that if businesses have satisfactory quality management systems in place, the Authority will amend its supervision accordingly. The Authority bases its intervention policy on the principle of ‘Hard where we have to be, soft where we can’. (Source: Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority). In 2007 the Authority conducted random tests in our EM-TÉ stores. Based on the results of these tests, the Authority gave the EM-TÉ stores a ‘green’ rating, which equates to almost no risk.
Less salt, more taste
Our Culivers meal and meal components are produced in line with the guidelines set by the Health Council of the Netherlands. These guidelines stipulate a maximum of 800 mg of sodium (2 grams of salt) in a main meal. In order to meet this strict standard we replace the salt by extra herbs and spices. These create a tasty meal that consumers can enjoy without noticing the lower salt content.
Revolutionary barcodes
Sligro Food Group and Wijngaard Kaas were the first companies to conduct a pilot project using the new barcode that all cash tills in the Netherlands will have to scan from 2010 onwards. The new barcode also offers many new opportunities and benefits from an SRE perspective, including improved food safety through better monitoring of shelf-lives. The barcode will also allow more efficient and targeted procedures. Sligro started using this new barcode in 2008, while EM-TÉ will follow in 2009
ENVIRONMENT
Cycling to work
As part of the awareness process referred to above we challenged our employees to take part in an environmentally friendly and healthy activity in 2008 by organising the ‘Cycling to Work’ project. This resulted in over 300 employees cycling to work every day in September. Our goal in this respect was to make them more aware of their lifestyle and encourage them to take more physical exercise to benefit their personal health.
Food safety versus energy consumption: pasteurisation versus modified atmosphere packaging
Sometimes we have to choose between conflicting SRE interests. In our Culivers activities in Eindhoven, for example, we have consciously chosen to pasteurise the meals we make for older people, even though this uses more energy. If we were to base our decision purely on energy consumption, it would be more efficient to use modified atmosphere packaging for these meals. Pasteurisation, however, is better from a food safety perspective and results in longer shelf-lives. Given the primary group for whom we are producing these products we have chosen to attach more weight to food safety by opting for this method.
Heat recovery at Culivers
We have invested in heat recovery in the new Culivers production facilities in Eindhoven by linking three heat exchange systems to the cooling installation. These heat 30,000 litres of water a day from temperatures of 6 degrees Celsius to around 40 degrees Celsius. This water is subsequently heated to 55 degrees and so can be used in the cleaning process. We also recover energy by re-using warm water from the pasteurisation process.
Introduction of Navmaster and Intertour
For the past few months the lorries that Sligro Food Group uses have been fitted with Navmaster 2004 on-board computers. As well as being a navigation system for drivers and improving their safety, the system also has various other benefits. These include the advance route planning option, which results in fewer kilometres being driven and, therefore, more efficient and environmentally friendly transportation.
Our lorries are always 95% loaded so as to ensure that our deliveries, of which there are over 600 a day, are as efficient and involve as few journeys as possible. Lorries that are not fully laden with products for customers are loaded with returnable-deposit and disposable packaging, cardboard, plastic and other items being returned to our central distribution centre in Veghel. We use the Intertour software package, with its built-in GPRS system, to ensure efficient planning.
Based on the up-to-date order book, this software optimally plans all the routes to be driven. Our short lead-times mean that planning continues into the night. The system is set up so that relief drivers and also drivers from other linguistic backgrounds know exactly what they have to do. The lorries are continuously tracked so that we can alert customers in the event, for example, of traffic problems. A good example of how lower costs go hand-in-hand with higher quality and a better environment.
Most energy-efficient lorry driver in the Netherlands
High fuel prices and a desire to contribute to a cleaner environment are just two of the reasons for using energy extra efficiently. Although the lorry drivers are formally employed by the road transport companies that we contract to deliver our products, we nevertheless regard them as ‘our’ drivers. To encourage sustainable entrepreneurship among the road transport companies we held a competition over a four-week period in 2008 to find out who was the most energy-efficient lorry driver in the Netherlands. The competition was simply based on who used the lowest amount of fuel per kilometre during the four weeks.
Apart from the attraction for drivers of winning the title, we also used the competition as a way of communicating the importance of more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly driving (‘new-style driving’) to all our employees.