Balloon One’s ProFresh platform has enabled the UK foodservice supplier to speed up picking and packing and reduce waste to increase revenue
Albion Fine Foods, which supplies fresh produce to chefs and caterers across London and the South East of England, has reported exceptional results from its use of the ProFresh platform from supply chain technology partner Balloon One.
In the 30 months since its use, Albion Fine Foods has tripled its fresh produce revenue from £3mn to £9.5mn per year through greater efficiency, with wastage running at less than 3 per cent and declining steadily as volumes have increased.
“Fruit and vegetable orders look completely different from our traditional orders as there are more lines and smaller individual quantities and values,” said Toby Raphael, general manager at Albion Fine Foods. “ProFresh provides us with instant visibility across the warehouse, ensuring the cold store team, planners and suppliers all have access to the same information in real-time, making it far easier to see what we have and what we need.
“ProFresh has enabled us to grow our fresh produce revenue from £3mn per year to £9.5mn per year in the 30 months since go-live, and we are on course to increase total fresh produce volumes to £13mn over the next 12 months.”
The platform has also enabled picking and packing to accelerate significantly, with orders visible in the work centre, sortable by route, size, volume or weight, and easily allocated to specific individual pickers. Picking accuracy at Albion Fine Foods now exceeds 99.5 per cent, on over 4,000 lines per night, with cost per line picked decreasing by around 30 per cent.
John Burgess, director of innovation at Balloon One, commented: “The improved numbers Albion Fine Foods is seeing tell the story better than we could. They show what’s possible when a system is built around how fresh food actually moves, especially at a time when unpredictable weather conditions are causing challenges for fresh produce operators with managing supply and demand. Albion Fine Foods has now been able to take everything it has learnt from the last two and a half years of live data, putting this knowledge back into the hands of its planning and warehouse teams.”
Balloon One’s work with Albion Fine Foods has earned it a place on the shortlist for the Kite Packaging Supply Chain Innovation Award at the 30th Supply Chain Excellence Awards, taking place in London on 5 November.
