Sustainable development at Bidvest Europe
Bidvest Europe leads the industry in running its operations from an embedded platform of sustainable development values, and is attracting high quality employees and winning new business as a result of practices that anticipate demand for responsible and sustainable products. While many consumers in the current economic downturn are making buying decisions based on price, Bidvest Europe has invested to save money by adopting more environmentally efficient processes, bringing down transport costs and reducing consumption of energy and resources.

• Demand for reduction of environmental impacts, particularly carbon performance impacted by food miles, packaging and fuel
• Demand for healthier and more sustainable foods
• Demand for accurate and robust information on food labelling including nutritional and calorific data, food origin and provenance
• Demand for local and seasonal produce

• managing and minimising environmental impacts, including resource consumption, water and energy usage
• compliance with tightening environmental legislation, regulations and risk management
• compliance with health and safety legislation, regulations and associated requirements

• reduction in CO₂ output ahead of potential legislation
• exploit the company’s sustainability leadership in the catering industry

Sustainability introduction
The food industry has a major impact on the world’s resources and both institutional customers and end consumers increasingly demand that the foodservice industry take responsibility for serving healthy and sustainably produced food. Bidvest Europe, including 3663, Deli XL, Horeca Trade, Al Diyafa, Farutex and Nowaco, is committed to leading the industry in the responsible stewardship of resources. Sustainability as competitive advantage is a key element in divisional strategy.

While Bidvest Europe has a unified sustainable business development vision, differences in markets and cultures have resulted in the evolution of a variety of regional approaches.

To benefit from regional innovation, Bidvest Europe has formed a combined sustainability committee consisting of representatives of each committee from each national market. The combined committee works with the Bidvest Group sustainability committee. This open management structure shares information and leverages the benefits of regional innovation. Initiatives pioneered in one region are tested, developed into replicable programmes and then rolled out across the Bidvest Europe division.

The approach adopted by Bidvest Europe focuses on sustainability across people, products and the environment. Deli XL Belguim launched the “Start To Save” campaign to reinforce their business sustainability strategy. It encompasses economic, ecological and social factors with the focus on cost reduction, motivation, innovation, cohesion, confidence and competitive advantage.

Economic performance

Opportunities and risks due to climate change
Our markets are impacted by major fluctuations in weather patterns which can result in stock outages as well as increasing the health risks related to food spoilage from unseasonal weather between source and supermarket.

Bidvest Europe’s role as food distributors places us in a key position in the food supply network. Sourcing products and maintaining the integrity of the product (eg. the cold chain) is central to the service we offer. These and other market-leading practices present Bidvest Europe companies with opportunities to serve our customers more reliably than our competitors.

Fair economic practices in local markets
All Bidvest Europe companies observe minimum wage levels in the markets they operate in and hire from local labour markets as a priority practice. Likewise, procurement of goods and services continues the trend towards local suppliers as society becomes more conscious of the societal and environmental costs of sourcing food from limited resource stocks, out of season, or processed by exploited labour. We do not have a consistent measure of the proportion of spending on locally-based suppliers; but the closest proxy will be the distance travelled per item delivered, currently at 470 kms.

Public benefit services
Bidvest Europe is at the forefront of industry efforts to provide healthier eating alternatives, especially in the provision of nutritional information regarding products we sell and the selection of ingredients used in our own-label products.

In the Netherlands, Deli XL complies with government’s ‘Healthy Choices’ certification standard across its private-label products. Launched in January 2008, the private-label brand ‘Fresh4You’ encourages consumers to adopt a healthier lifestyle by offering healthier choices, especially for the midday meal.

3663 has long been responding to consumer demands for healthier options with the healthier eating campaign ‘Positive Steps’. The initial focus was on salt content reductions in more than 300 products without compromising taste or quality. Since then, the campaign has reformulated recipes to cut fat, saturates, sugar, artificial colours and additives across many products in the company’s private-label range. Concurrently, 3663 was closely involved with the movement for healthier school meals and supported the Schools Food Trust initiative to instil healthy eating habits among Britain’s schoolchildren. After a number of years of research, testing and development, guidelines and recipes were introduced by the School Foods Trust for the serving of balanced, nutritious meals at junior and senior schools. 3663’s reputation has benefited from its contribution to this initiative. The business continues to play a role, producing guidelines for school caterers on how to meet government’s nutrition-based standards for lunch and break-times.

Environmental performance
Environmental responsibility tops the public and political agenda in Europe and strong pressure is being applied to the food industry, particularly in the form of tender specifications for institutional and government food catering contracts. While there are regional differences, in general customers demand fresh, seasonal products of known provenance. Marine resources in particular receive close scrutiny. In response to this demand, 3663 has increased its range of British produce from 39 to 118 products.

As market leaders in their industry, Bidvest Europe companies already possess strong sustainability credentials through compliance with the highest environmental standards. To retain and improve market share, further innovations in branding standards for product lines and improvements in environmentally sound processes are becoming a business priority.

Personnel at each company implement and monitor company-wide standards of environmental management and practice. At 3663, for example, this effort is implemented and supported at local and regional level by over 65 sustainability coordinators.

Systems to monitor environmental performance are now largely in place, enabling us to set targets and implement programmes for next year covering packaging waste, recycled packaging and energy and fuel usage. This will enable us to fulfil our aim of submitting carbon footprint data to the Carbon Disclosure Project in 2010. This year, the sustainability reports for the UK operation, 3663, and the Dutch operation, Deli XL, were undertaken in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and externally audited, achieving respectively a B+ and a C rating. In September 2009, 3663 achieved ISO 14064 assurance for its work reducing greenhouse gasses and its innovative waste oil recycling scheme, followed by gaining The Carbon Trust Standard for the company’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions.

Transport – environmental impact and performance
With transport being the biggest user of energy within Bidvest Europe operations, we strive to minimise our fuel usage, both diesel and petrol. There is a general understanding within Bidvest Europe that a reduction in CO₂ emissions translates directly into cash savings. Consequently, measures to monitor CO₂ emissions are in place. Legislative pressure is also being brought to bear.

Significant initiatives to reduce diesel fuel usage
Diesel consumption has been reduced significantly on a like-for-like basis across Bidvest Europe, partly because of reduced volumes, but largely as a result of more efficient distribution (routing and better driving). Significant initiatives include:

Reducing total distance travelled – All divisional companies have worked to reduce total distance travelled. This is more challenging in growth areas such as Poland and Belgium. Improved routing systems have the task of ensuring that trucks are deployed as efficiently as possible.

Good driving – In the prior year, Deli XL - Netherlands put its drivers through a programme in support of the Dutch government’s sustainable driving initiative. To save fuel, all trucks have speed limiters fitted and set to a maximum of 85 km/hr. This had a dramatic influence on driver behaviour and fuel savings. The initiative will be rolled out to all companies in the division and is being rolled out at Deli XL- Belgium in the current year. All companies have either introduced or are trialling advanced telematics to help manage and monitor driving behaviour.

Recycled bio-diesel – 3663 runs a successful waste oil recycling scheme, whereby customers’ used cooking oil is collected and converted to bio-diesel (B30 mix) to fuel our fleet of 710 refrigerated vehicles. The scheme offers our customers a unique opportunity to be part of a ‘virtuous circle’, by reducing the impact of their business on the environment through reduced CO₂ emissions within their supply chain. 3663 used 2,4 million litres of recycled bio-diesel mix, thereby reducing fleet CO₂ emissions by over 6 000 tonnes (9%) during the year. Over three years, this project has reduced 3663’s fleet-related CO₂ emissions by over 18,000 tonnes. This pioneering programme has won the company various awards and has reinforced its brand reputation, factors that undoubtedly contribute to 3663’s success in winning important business contracts. The recycling initiative has also been tested in other companies in the division, starting with Deli XL- Belgium in the fourth quarter of 2010. This partnership with our customers allows them to join in the campaign to reduce the environmental impact of the food chain.

Cleaner vehicles – Bidvest Europe has invested in environmentally friendly transport refrigeration units in the UK. These refrigeration units – 1 022 in total – negate the need for an additional auxiliary diesel engine to power the refrigeration system as they are electric and powered by the truck engines. The new refrigeration units have provided a saving of approximately 115 000 litres of diesel per week. This equates to 6 million litres of diesel annually and reduced emissions of approximately 15 800 tonnes of CO₂.

Green travel at 3663 – The environmental management system has been developed with the introduction of the ‘sustainable travel initiative’. Locations have been required to undertake ‘sustainable travel’ surveys, the results being communicated to encourage colleagues to seek alternative travel arrangements including car share, cycle to work schemes and public transport. The reduced road miles achieved by this initiative are recorded and promoted on site. Focus on company car drivers during the last 12 months has resulted in a decrease in the number of high-mileage drivers (those driving 40 000 business miles or more per year) from 35 to just nine by July 2010. This initiative will generate carbon emission reductions and endorse the company commitment to sustainable travel.