Company News | Food & Drink

Worldwide Fruit Accredited with Marks & Spencer PLANA Silver Award

More great news for a company that has been working closely with CQM Training & Consultancy Ltd to improve their Lean and CI processes.

Worldwide Fruit are an international fruit marketing and distribution Company sourcing products globally, from over 1000 growers worldwide ensuring continuity of supply 365 days of the year. Established in January 2000, they are an award winning business supplying top Quality fruit to the UK’s leading supermarkets. Specialising in apples, pears and avocados and with offices in Spalding, Lincolnshire and Whitstable, Kent, they employ in the region of 250 staff and turnover £114 million per annum.

Their Company mission is to be “Customers First Choice”. With the introduction of a coaching culture and the development of a lean production system, continuous improvement is how they do business.

CQM Training & Consultancy Ltd have been working closely with Worldwide Fruit for a year and a half to ensure they fulfil their Company strategy and objectives. Delivering both adult and young Apprenticeships in LEAN/Food Manufacturing Excellence Level 3 at its Spalding site in Lincolnshire, we are delighted to hear of our client’s recent great achievement.

Worldwide Fruit, Spalding, have just been accredited by Marks and Spencer with their PLANA Silver Award which refers to the M&S ‘Foods Sustainable Factory Programme’ framework. This verifies World Wide Fruit’s significant achievement in a number of critical areas including their application of LEAN principles throughout the business. They are the first M&S Fruit category supplier to achieve this status.

Within PLANA, suppliers work through the bronze, silver and gold framework across 3 pillars –HR, Environment and Lean Manufacturing and are awarded an overall score. M&S believe that to achieve silver is really challenging and so have set a target that 30% of their food will be sourced from ‘silver’ factories by 2015. This enables suppliers to prioritise what’s important to them and work over time to embed change and excellent performance.

What does an M&S Silver factory mean? In terms of people and HR the site has a clear and ambitious people plan and metrics, employees are actively motivated and rewarded and there is superb training in place for all levels. From an environmental point of view, the site has a clear environmental plan and metrics and a management system to underpin this. Finally from a lean manufacturing point of view we are looking for a Dynamic business environment with an increased pace of change and a Changed workforce mind-set: people are empowered and able to generate ideas from all tiers with continuous improvement embedded across the business and into the supply chain.