Embedded within the strategic procurement team at one of Europe’s largest frozen food companies, our team has been providing specialist indirect procurement support and expertise. Across Europe our client manufacture, sell and distribute a range of frozen food products across 13 countries. With their Headquarters in the United Kingdom, the client was keen to add indirect category expertise to their team as they launched a group wide strategic procurement review across all of their sites in key spend categories
Client Overview
As one of Europe’s largest frozen food companies with processing and distribution presence across the continent, our client continues to grow and develop through M&A activity and organic growth.
As a listed company, there is a keen focus on procurement and supply chain alongside ESG concerns.Having worked with Ebit previously, their team was keen to bring in specialist support for a series of strategic, group-wide indirect procurement projects and knew exactly where to come.
Our Approach
Having worked with the client previously we had an understanding of their culture and aims, however, this new project represented a chance to work across all of their sites within Europe, influencing and shaping their procurement strategy for many years to come.
To achieve this we had to gain a clear understanding of the picture “as is”, which involved compiling and standardising data across all sites and in at least 8 languages. Once this was achieved we were able to pull together comprehensive spend and supplier data across each site, country and category.
This allowed our team to work alongside the clients own team and sites, identifying more than 100 suppliers, 400 + categories of products and commonalities across the sites.
Results
By working with the client to move away from a siloed approach to procurement, which had encouraged a reactive a fragmented approach to procurement at the local level, to a cohesive group-wide strategy it has been possible to identify savings of 29% of their existing PPE spend.
The existing preferred supplier has also seen an opportunity to increase their engagement within the business, leading to an upturn in their revenues and a deeper, more collaborative approach
This move away from a fragmented supply base will also have a beneficial impact across their finance and compliance teams, with fewer supplier invoices to process and fewer suppliers to monitor