Sainsbury’s outsource to Hays Asset Control Solutions

Sainsbury’s, recently outsourced the management of eight million crates for food produce to Hays Asset Control Solutions (Hays ACS) as part of its strategy to reduce packaging and meet its environmental targets, has added 500,000 more units to its produce pool ready for Christmas.

At the same time, Sainsbury’s has switched its slow-moving goods such as batteries, hair care products and toiletries – known as ‘K line’ items – to an additional 750,000 newly-designed RTP (returnable transit packaging) containers.

The retail giant has made a massive commitment to recycling – targeting a switch from 38% non-cardboard today to 75% RTP for produce by 2005 – and has contracted Hays ACS, part of Hays plc, for seven years to supply, wash and manage the plastic crate pool. As part of the RTP logistics process, Hays ACS is also recovering 160,000 tonnes of packaging per annum from Sainsbury’s supermarkets, collating it regionally, and then bulk supplying the material to recycling specialists who used to collect it on an expensive piecemeal basis. A third service in the process is the recovery, repair and control of thousands of dollies.

Sainsbury’s strategy also includes the creation of eight regional crate washing and recycling & recovery units alongside its RDCs, managed by Hays ACS and creating up to 1000 jobs. Five are in Haydock, Bristol, Hams Hall, Greenham Common and Waltham Point while three in the Home Counties and Scotland have yet to be announced.

The ‘K line’ pool will be controlled at two new depots at Stoke and Hoddesdon that will have a combined footplate of 530,000 sq ft and for which Sainsbury’s and Hays ACS together specified and sourced the design of a special crate suitable for slow-moving non-food goods. Materials handling specialists in both Germany and the Netherlands were consulted to ensure the crates, eventually sourced from Sweden, were of the right weight and dimension for the retailer’s fully automated warehousing and distribution system.

Hays’ crate management system speedily provides accurate reports on crate balances at each point in the supply chain. Every crate movement, in and out, from supplier to retailer to Hays ACS’s wash centre and back to supplier is recorded and analysed daily. Control procedures are monitored on a sophisticated website-based management system, efficiently reducing Sainsbury’s supplier stock periods, typically from a month down to a week.

Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Limited project manager, John Rogers, said: “We were delighted with the way Hays, our RTP partner, took our specification and quickly came up with an innovative solution to allow us to switch our ‘K line’ to recyclable crates.”

Martin Delamare, Hays ACS’s new deputy managing director, said: “By carefully controlling the crate pool it has been possible to increase the number of units available to suppliers without necessarily adding to the stock. As more and more suppliers come on board and Sainsbury’s rapidly increases its RTP requirement to save packaging and meet environmental targets, our management system will enable a very controlled roll-out.”