Located at Food Central and adjacent to Dublin Airport, over the last 13 years, Oakland International has grown substantially in Ireland, and is today a leading supply chain partner for many large and growing retail brands.
With trade between Ireland and the UK now subject to new export rules, and all requiring paperwork, the company notes that it is ensuring that the traditionally smooth movement of short shelf-life products is continuing to flow.
Oakland International noted that one way of doing this has been to encourage more producers to rethink their processes and consider the freeze-tempering of products, which, traditionally, has been an underutilised solution for removing the risk from the short shelf-life product supply chain.
Explaining the benefits of the freeze-temper process, Richard Hill, MD, Oakland International Ireland, noted, “There are not many products unsuitable for freeze-to-temper solutions, as any product suitable for home freezing is generally suitable for tempering.”
Date-Coding Solutions
Oakland International highlighted that it has been providing tempering and date-coding solutions for over 20 years, into every retail and foodservice environment across the UK.
Stock that has been freeze-tempered can be called off by UK retailers/foodservice customers, removed on the day of order in bulk, and then date-coded, either as individual units that are unpacked and repacked into an outer case, or while in the original case, using a simple cut-out packaging solution to enable in-case coding, the company explained.
According to Hill, “Rather than producing to order in small batches, product can be manufactured in larger production runs and frozen down immediately after production. No date code is applied to the consumer pack, but producers can choose to print a batch code on the sleeve/pack.
“The outer case is labelled with a product description, and a frozen best-before date – typically, at least 12 months – is applied. Product is then shipped in full-pallet or full-load quantities to a UK frozen storage platform, where it remains as buffer stock,” he said.
“Savings from end-to-end manufacturing to delivery can top 30% when taking into account production batch efficiencies, wastage reductions, and replenishment supply chain costs,” Hill added.
Value-Added Services
The Oakland Group in the UK reflects the Irish-based operation and extends into a wider range of value-added services, supporting an ever-increasing portfolio of clients from outside the UK, the company noted.
Handling over two million cases per week across three UK operations, Oakland noted that it has an extensive and growing fleet of liveried vehicles and provides a full range of ambient, chilled and frozen supply chain, picking and packing solutions, including an extensive home delivery solution for temperature-controlled parcels, servicing around 140,000 homes per week.
© 2022 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Commercial content. For more supply chain news, click here. Click sign up to subscribe to Checkout.
