Culina Logistics grabs a Pizza the action!

Established 30-years ago, Sodebo is an awarding winning supplier of prepared foods, snacks, meats and delicatessen products to supermarkets and food service companies throughout Europe. In 2003 turnover was £220 million.

Based in St Georges de Montaigu, France, the company’s five modern production units, totalling 1.2 million sq ft (111,480 sq m), manufacture over 100 million pizzas, 30m sandwiches and 15m toasted sandwiches a year.

When the UK operation began in 2001, product was supplied directly from France, but as business developed, with larger customers requiring multi-depot deliveries, two logistics providers were appointed to handle transportation.

However, to improve shared-user distribution and benefit from consolidating products to a single site, Sodebo has now appointed Culina to establish a UK market platform from its modern Milton Keynes distribution centre.

"In order to sustain Sodebo’s rapid growth in the UK market we need a high-quality logistics provider such as Culina that we can rely upon,” commented Alain Mounis, logistics manager at Sodebo.

“Culina provides a range of benefits, from cost efficiencies of a single provider to access to real time management information, as well as a high level of reactivity to our questions or requests,” he added.

Initially up to 5,000 cases are despatched a week to RDCs (regional distribution centres) supplying retailers, such as Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Nisa, Iceland and Londis. This is expected to increase significantly as the business expands.

Orders are received by EDI (electronic data interchange) and Culina provides intake, storage, picking and distribution services.

Sodebo takes advantage of a range of added value services, including access to secure information via a dedicated website, POD scanning and a 24-hour customer care centre.