31/10/05 - SACD Freight Takes Gold

In a combined and first time entry, South African Dried Fruit (SAD), SACD Freight together with McDonalds Transport and Industrial Logistics Solutions, won Gold at the recent 17th annual Logistics Achiever Awards (LAA) banquet, held at the Sandton Convention Centre on 6 October 2005.

Historically, SAD had used Spoornet rail services to transport full containers of finished product directly from their factory in Upington to the elected port for shipping. Due to Spoornet's changed policy of only supporting rail on the main trunk routes,the only alternative for SAD was to move to a road based Supply Chain where pallets of finished product are road freighted to Cape Town to consolidate into containers. SAD needed service providers who would become an extension of their business and have the same regard as SAD's objectives of maximum customer satisfaction through on-time delivery, product quality and price as SAD do themselves. SAD were not simply looking for a transporter and consolidator

SACD FREIGHT was selected as the consolidation service provider responsible for product storage, container preparation, container loading & delivery to port, on the basis of their consolidation facility, experience and the want to work with SAD in building a long term business relationship in Supply Chain through flexibility to accommodate SAD's varying demand cycles.

The performance results thus far are:

• 100% on time delivery to vessel
• 0.02% loading error
• 0.03% product infestation

The entry reflected a number of elements including benefits through a committed re-engineering of the supply chain to achieve world-class service, ability of clients and service providers (3PL's) to work together in a partnership to meet each others strategic objectives, professional approach to purchasing and service provider appointments.

Logistics Achiever Awards are aimed at rewarding logistics and supply chain excellence benchmarked at world-class standards.

The judges score sheet criteria are based on leadership, strategy, quality management, customer satisfaction, business results, operational improvements, sustainability and people management amongst others.

"What started, as a transport problem has now become an optimised & sustainable world-class Supply Chain with considerable savings to the exporter." Said Johan Dobies, Marketing Manager, SACD Freight Cape Town, who piloted this project