Member Article

Local companies work together to get chilled food to supermarkets in time for Christmas

A partnership between two companies is ensuring that millions of pieces of chilled food will make it fresh onto UK supermarket shelves in time for the busy Christmas and New Year period.

Each year, products made for the festive party season by Teesside-based SK Chilled Foods make the short journey down the A1 to West Yorkshire-based The Ice Co Storage & Logistics.

At its site in South Kirkby, near Doncaster, using state-of-the-art temperature-controlled technology, The Ice Co Storage & Logistics store around 4,000pallets of food on behalf of SK Chilled Foods in a massive, 28,730m3 facility.

With up to 300 cases being kept on one pallet alone, this equates to millions of individual pieces of popular snack foods such as mozzarella sticks, spring rolls, onion bhajis and prawn toast.

The food is then picked up by the UK’s biggest supermarket chains and put on shelves in time for Christmas or New Year.

This 24/7 logistical operation involves staff from SK being seconded to work at South Kirkby throughout the whole of December.

SK Chilled Foods Managing Director Jeremy Faulkner said: “Christmas and New Year is our busiest time of the year and despite having three sites on Teesside, the sheer volume of food we make for our supermarket customers means it is simply not possible for us to store this on our own premises.

“We therefore needed to work with an expert in the field of temperature-controlled storage and The Ice Co Storage & Logistics fit the bill perfectly. Their technical and quality systems mirror our own very high standards making them the ideal partner.

“We have been working with The Ice Co Storage & Logistics for the last ten years and as well as understanding our business, they are very flexible and able to adapt to our ever-changing needs as we continue to grow.”

The Ice Co Storage & Logistics Managing Director Paul Martin said: “We have been working in partnership with SK Foods for coming up to 10 years now, our mission is to meet their requirements all year round with a view to supply the seasonal peak over the festive period.

“We have grown together with this to ensure both operation teams are aligned to deliver a seamless supply chain to the Retail Market. In doing so we continue to grow from strength to strength as a team every year with great forward planning from both sides.

“The Ice Co Storage & Logistics are proud to be a part of SK Foods continuous success, with once again another successful year delivered.”

As well as Christmas, the two companies work together throughout the year, with The Ice Co Storage & Logistics providing distribution support to SK.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Neil Shaefer .