Lidl UK Signs 5-Year Agreement With IFCO For Meat & Poultry Shipments

PULLACH, Germany — IFCO, the leading global provider of reusable packaging solutions for fresh foods, is pleased to announce they have signed an agreement with Lidl UK for the supply of IFCO’s nesting trays for the shipment of Lidl’s fresh meat, poultry, and packaged seafood. Under the agreement, IFCO will supply Lidl with circa 16 million trays in the first year and increase the number of trays supplied steadily each year thereafter.

„At Lidl we continuously seek opportunities to improve our supply chain and have determined using a large, open pool of trays for all of our meat and poultry lines would drive benefits both internally and to our suppliers,” said Matthew Wallis, Lidl Logistics Manager, „After a rigorous tender process, we selected IFCO because of their demonstrated speed and scalability to support our growth.” Lidl and IFCO worked closely together to ensure a smooth and rapid transition to IFCO trays, successfully implementing the program just 10 weeks after the first tender discussion.

„IFCO is delighted to offer our scale and solutions to support leading grocery retailers like Lidl,” said Wolfgang Orgeldinger, Chief Executive Officer of IFCO. He continued, „By utilizing pooled, reusable trays for meat, poultry, and seafood, both Lidl and their suppliers can reap the benefits of a hygienic, environmentally-friendly, and cost-efficient fresh supply chain.”

IFCO is the leading global provider of reusable packaging solutions for fresh foods, serving customers in 50+ countries. IFCO operates a pool of 270+ million Reusable Plastic Containers (RPCs) globally, which are used for over 1.4 billion shipments of fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, bread, and other items from suppliers to grocery retailers every year. IFCO RPCs ensure a better fresh food supply chain by protecting freshness and quality and lowering costs, food waste and environmental impact compared to single-use packaging. IFCO is a Brambles Company. www.ifco.com.

Brambles Limited (ASX:BXB) is a supply-chain logistics company operating primarily through the CHEP and IFCO brands. Brambles enhances performance for customers by helping them transport goods through their supply chains more efficiently, sustainably and safely. The Group's primary activity is the provision of reusable unit-load equipment such as pallets, crates and containers for shared use by multiple participants throughout the supply chain, under a model known as "pooling". Brambles primarily serves customers in the fast-moving consumer goods (e.g. dry food, grocery, and health and personal care), fresh produce, beverage, retail and general manufacturing industries, counting many of the world's best-known brands among its customers. The Group also operates specialist container logistics businesses serving the automotive sectors. Brambles has its headquarters in Sydney, Australia, but operates in more than 60 countries, with its largest operations in North America and Western Europe. Brambles employs more than 14,500 people and owns more than 550 million pallets, crates and containers through a network of approximately 850 service centres. For further information, please visit www.brambles.com.

Source: Brambles Limited