ALAS! - Cubic Melons & Supply Chain Sustainability!

Speaker A: Is your existing supply chain and logistics consultancy provider failing to deliver? Our experienced thought leading team at Loguru could be your choice for an intelligent and friendly professional supply chain. If you have a challenge in supply chain procurement or logistics, or maybe just want to improve the value you get from them, visit loguru.co.uk complete end to end satisfaction guaranteed.

Speaker B: Coming up in this episode, does anybody

Speaker C: really care whether their watermelon is shaped in a sphere instead of a cube?

Speaker D: Now I'm getting excited about the cubic potato. Now you've mentioned that.

Speaker C: Well, I don't know, that's a bit of a challenge.

Speaker B: The Logistics Collective podcast is a series focusing on the sustainable future of the logistics industry. We'll discuss the industry's future challenges and interview thought leaders who can offer solutions. We're commencing our search for the higher level of intelligence needed to make the industry more sustainable and, and profitable. Here's your host, Malcolm Pope.

Speaker D: Welcome to another podcast from the Logistics Collective. And, um, this is an alas podcast, so that means that Keith Holdsworth from Perfection Group is joining me here today to talk about sustainable supply chains. Hi, Keith, how you doing?

Speaker C: Hi, Malcolm. I'm keeping well, thank you. Enjoying some sunshine at this point of the year.

Speaker D: Yes, yeah, you've got sunshine, but, well, no, uh, lined Internet at the moment. You're operating courtesy of 5G today.

Speaker C: Yes, we've had the delightful, uh, digging down the road has taken out the Internet connection. I'd like to think that it's planned because we did get an email, uh, from the provider a matter of hours before it happened. But yes, uh, I'm using the delight of a mobile network to, uh, connect with you today.

Speaker D: Well, let's hope we have a sustainable signal so we can carry on. So, Keith, what does sustainable supply chain mean for you?

Speaker C: Oh, here's a good question. You did, you didn't tell me that that was going to be the opening question.

Speaker D: Um, hey, well, well, look, no, I mean, you know, I'm sorry, I think we know each other well enough. I mean, apologies for, um. I don't want to be regarded as a curmudgeon in terms of doing this with you, but sometimes we're surprised by questions. But yeah, we can break it down if it's too challenging.

Speaker C: No, no, no. Well, I guess in my mind, sust supply chain probably comes from, um, you're trying to make the least impact on the environment and there are a huge number of ways that you can do that. And ultimately, I suppose at this point in time, our measure of sustainability would be something to do with the carbon footprint that we have uh, created as a result of the activities that we've done. But the supply chains are long if you consider all the way back through your raw materials, even you know, core feedstocks, you know, whether it's, I don't know, oil or sulfur or something like this. You know, there could be so many components that are very, very distant from the supply chain that you're thinking about in maybe delivering a finished product to a customer who maybe then puts it in the hands of a consumer or maybe in an online retailing sense, you know, you're dealing direct with a consumer. But there are so many steps that go all the way back if you really map that entire supply chain. And I've actually seen recently some really good stuff where people have tried to do this, focus on the worst offending parts of that supply chain, but maybe using something like the CO2 footprint all the way along that chain as a guide to say how well are you doing? But it can literally be anything about the product, uh, design, the formulation, the packaging, the routing through the network which is with many, many steps and you know, sometimes global, sometimes quite local. But you know, you've still got lots of options about how you do that. You know, your facilities and the energy that you're using, whether that's in manufacturing or in a distribution sense, um, you know, the physical logistics and the, and the footprint that you've got there, whether that's transportation type or just how well you're sweating some of um, assets, um, it's just a really, really big and complex scenario. I guess you'd have to then include the whole of the return supply chain potential because if you've got a product which has got some sort of um, collection process or some sort of recyclability uh, of the product, reusability of a product, repairability of product. There are so many different things that can influence the sustainability of a supply chain that it's a very big topic and one which know we could probably talk about on um, probably to some it'll be really interesting, to some it might be less interesting, but we could probably talk 1012 podcasts on various different things to do with a uh, kind of recyclable and uh, sustainable supply chain.

Speaker D: And I think you this year uh, for the logistics collective is going to be a focus on sustainability. Why do I think that's key? Well in um, a few days time I shall be 60 and I'm really reflecting on a wonderful career and I have had a wonderful career and I'm very grateful for that. But then you think about legacy and the legacy that we're actually going to leave behind. And um, that for me is part of the drive, uh, really behind here. But also the. Like you, Keith. We've been looking at sustainability for more than a couple of decades now in different forms. And sustainability is sort of, it might be regarded, uh, by some as a little bit of a fluffy word. Um, you know, it's a, it's a nice to have, it's an extra, but for the more informed. It is something that is fundamental to the survival of the planet going forward. But as first steps, you look at sustainability and it really is actually just about um, the improved use of the resources that we have. And generally with the improved use of resources there's a benefit, there's a business, direct business benefit outside of reputation that says, well, if I'm more efficient then I'm more likely to make more profit. And you know, this for me is, it's the mooder, it's the elimination of waste. And I've always wanted to be a mooder plucker. And this for me is part of the passion that how can we be as efficient as we possibly can in the first stage?

Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean, I know, um, I've had a couple of examples certainly as a manufacturer supplying to a, uh, retail kind of supply chain where we were able to, through things like logistics, network optimization, through things like making sure that we got more of a hub and spoke type of design into a, into a network structure. You know, we took significant cost out of the network. But actually the thing that we were communicating most into the retailer was, you know, this will allow us to offset some of the price increases in our raw materials, which, you know, was true at the time and was, you know, completely relevant. But what we were actually able to also describe was here is some of the CO2 benefit that we've created as a result of being more efficient in the transportation. And the retailer absolutely snapped that uh, up because part of the credentials and being a, uh, green retailer, you know, there's a real sort of desire to be able to be very public about the benefits that you're creating and the lessening of the impact that you're having on the environment. But for one of your suppliers to come along and say, do you know what you can now say that you've just removed 400,000 tons of CO2 in your distribution of this product? Because we've managed to take that out, because we've done this kind of network Design improvement. And it was one of these things where you were in sort of maybe multi year uh, negotiations about a contract for uh, supplying this particular product. And they were very happy in the fact that you could, you could talk about a benefit that you'd made that they could then piggyback on and claim as part of their credentials, but being a little bit maybe opaque about how much they'd been involved in delivering that. But you know, just being on the receiving end of it was certainly plenty as far as they were concerned.

Speaker D: Interesting Keith. I mean um, I want to sort of move on. Here's um, a bit of a question followed by a thought to give you some thinking time. I don't want to be too cruel to you today. I'm not that clear.

Speaker C: Write this down, am I? And then, and then reply, yeah, I

Speaker D: think that might be, you know, that might be an idea. Do you think there is a relationship between sustainability and working capital optimization in businesses? What do I mean? If I look at it is that quite often, you know, the quicker something moves to the paying consumer, the more quickly cash goes up the cycle as it were, goes up, goes up and pays for everybody. And if you then go and have a look at let's say a retailer, we might have started the order day one, deliver that week and then day one for day three and then day one for day two and then maybe even day one for day one on occasions. And um, what's the key drive behind that? Is probably to hold less inventory. But also there's a working capital perspective on that as well. And extending that a little bit further, it is uh, if we're looking at our desired service levels, so this idea that we can click and have it now. So I'm fascinated with um, if you like the new uh, same day services like Tesco's Whoosh for example, which I'm sure is useful to some, um, perhaps the less able part of our society. But I do wonder whether or not it is fecklessness rather than real service that's being provided there and um, whether or not it is profit rather than real services being provided within this or indeed, you know, we want it next day. Well, do you really? And you. What I'm trying to get to is that if we understood the consequences of, of saying uh, I want it right now and that's want rather than when do I need it. What really is the sustainability trade off in terms of that? Because generally if I'm, if I'm looking at something, the more time that you have to optimize something and to join it together with other things, the more sustainable you become and the less time you have it then the less sustainable you become. What's your thoughts on that, Keith?

Speaker C: Well, um. Yeah, so. Well, I've got two thoughts, I suppose. One is that, you know, intuitively it feels like the drive and the desire for a instantaneous or, you know, a very, very speedy response is likely to put you into a scenario where you reduce the capability to be as efficient in moving that product through the chain. Particularly if you've tried to optimize inventory in a way that means that you've sort of not got, uh, an immense amount of working capital tied up in inventories in lots of very local situations. Um, I do think that maybe there are, on the converse of that, I think that there are probably some products, I'm not necessarily using Tesco Whoosh as the example, but there are probably a portfolio of products which are very, very commonly purchased, highly repetitive, in which case actually having a very local inventory of certain items is completely, completely just common sense, because you've got a very local inventory and you are able to respond to somebody who's placing an order on that item in a very, maybe it's a very erratic but very short, short lead time, uh, way to actually be able to service that very quickly from a local inventory when you've got arguably probably a fleet of transportation, whether this is electric bikes, whether it's scooters, whether it's um, transit vans, which probably by now in most cities going to be electric. But there is something that says actually if I've got some real core portfolio that I know I'm not going to create some sort of issue in terms of my inventory holding by having this in so many different places. You think about the traditional milkman as an example, always used to deliver milk, but then started to deliver bread, um, and maybe some eggs and uh, maybe some orange juice. Um, actually expanding the portfolio but into some other things that were still very high levels of consumption and frequency of consumption, that was never going to be a problem. And the fact that you were already going to go round the delivery because you were expecting to deliver some milk didn't make a difference whether or not you're going to deliver some extra products. So arguably speaking, you've made a zero impact almost on the environment because you're now just delivering more things in with each other. And somehow there is a trade off here. I think you and I, not, not on a previous podcast or anything, you know, we've always thought about this whole idea about if you send everybody to a shop and therefore they're taking their own vehicle to go and buy everything versus some people live close enough to shops to walk, obviously. Uh, but you uh, know if you, if you marry up the, a lot of people taking cars to a shop because you know, they, they're going to try to buy more than they can physically carry and they need some assistance by putting it in a vehic vehicle. What's the trade off between everybody going and doing that on their own versus putting into a, uh, home delivery where you're now going to be able to deliver to a number of people within the same proximity on the same day. You will have scheduled that and you need to schedule it however many hours or days before, just depending on, uh, how frequently you go. But actually trading those things off is kind of quite an interesting debate really, because you could set up a daily delivery schedule to most locations, providing you placed your order, uh, I don't know, 24 hours in advance and, and actually be able to be more efficient than people who tend to get in their car and go and fetch something because they just nip to the local shop because they've run out of something. If you can trade this off somehow. There is, there's going to be some sort of balancing line between where one's better than the other. And I'm not exactly sure it's going to be different based on cities, based on towns versus fairly rural locations. They're all different dynamics. Um, but there will be a tipping point where one is better than the other in whichever supply chain instance it is. You know, whether that's a food, uh, clothing, um, maybe white goods. You know, there's all sorts of differences between those changes.

Speaker D: There certainly is and it's complex. Um, and um, if I can make a shout out on the podcast, um, we'd be fascinating to hear from any, for anybody that has developed some sort of carbon accounting model that says, well, which is the best option because it's going to be dynamic within this. You're absolutely right. There's a difference between living in a rural environment and uh, a city. Um, there is a difference in terms of how vehicles are powered. Our household got its first electric car car a few weeks ago. So depending on where, how the electricity is generated, how does that impact if the electricity, um, going into that car is developed from sustainable sources, how does that compare now? And then you then say, well, maybe your home delivery network, uh, that goes into an electric vehicle, so that levels that out. But then you're then looking at, rather than having a common delivery network, you've got many delivery networks, you know, all the retailers, um, in large part or certainly the grocery retailers doing home delivery. You've got the various parcel companies out there, you have Amazon out there. And you know I live in a small close of five houses and in a day I've counted 18 vehicles doing deliveries coming in and out of that environment. Uh, ah, all of which will be optimizing based on their own vision and not necessarily, you know, what do we actually need? Well actually wouldn't it be good if we had a daily service that came around and maybe that looks a little bit like um, the old milk delivery system. I mean milk and bread even before the milkman was delivering bread, milk uh, and bread used to be delivered to house in the uk, uh, when I was a lad, which given that I'm shortly to be 60 was quite a, quite some time ago. But you know, we deconstructed what was in theory uh, an environmentally friendly or for an emissions basis an environmentally friendly milk delivery system, uh, because we wanted to go to bricks and mortar retail. And then perhaps a decade later it was well actually maybe people would prefer to um, have their products delivered to them. But what I feel that I'm missing in this is uh, where's the model that says what is best? And what I also feel that I'm missing is where's my green button? So if I want to do as a consumer it's my choice. I don't want to, to be too totalitarian in terms of this, but me as a consumer might want to make a choice for what's the most sustainable way of doing this. So I want to press the green button and um, where are those options at the moment?

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I can only support you in the logic of, you know, if you had 18 van drivers that have come to your close, drop off various different parcels to various different households multiple times a day. Even for some of the same parcel companies that's increasingly become a bugbear of my own as well where it just doesn't seem to make any logical sense because I don't really, I don't make the choice necessarily about the parcel company. I'm generally buying a product from a given source, whether you know, this is an online retailer or a combination of an online and bricks and mortar retailer. But I'm generally buying a product which I'm picking for the product and there'll be choices that ah, I've made in that. But one of the things That I don't get to choose is who is the courier who is bringing that to me. There might be some examples where you get to try to make that choice. I don't know, maybe on ebay or something like that. But, but I don't get to choose the courier. And actually I'm really not that bothered as long as they deliver my parcel on the timing that they have committed to and therefore that's trying to match with. And I try to think that that's going to match with my need as opposed to just artificially being as fast as possible. But um, I don't make that choice. Somebody else has made that choice because the contract that they've made and I don't really uh, you know, if, if there were a way for us to be able to combine some of those last mile delivery networks on a geographical sense, that meant that rather than having 18 vans coming and delivering to a single close, which let's face it, that's 18 vans who have gone from being full at the beginning of their shift down to empty at the end of their shift and then driving ultimately back to the depot to get reloaded. You know that the length of time it takes to go from full to empty is very protracted, very, very long. But what could happen if you merge together all of the people who were looking for deliveries in your close and you consolidated those deliveries onto a given route that came and delivered everything to your close on a given day that would probably go from full to empty. Maybe it has to go to the close next door to you as well, but it go from full to empty incredibly quickly and then be able to do something else, maybe drop into uh, a, uh, different provider's depot to be able to get reloaded, to be able to go and deliver very efficiently to two more closes and deliver everything from all of these different parcel companies. When I referred to that example that we did for this retailer that saved uh, a lot of CO2, a lot of miles, we were all about going from full to empty as quick as possible and being able to manage that as efficiently as we could. And uh, I think that kind of capability to then throw an empty vehicle back into a collective network where through some really good. We've got, got masses of technology available these days. You know, we, we need a collaborative technology solution where assets are no longer necessarily completely dedicated to a given provider. They can be shared and utilized. And when something's become available, it's a little bit like Uber. When something's become available, it appears back in the network and then can make, make a, another delivery route for somebody completely different. Um, and you know, I, I think that we're, you know, we're in danger of trying to, because everybody's trying to make their own profitability model work. As you said. They can only ever make that based on what they can see. And yet actually in the wider world there are so many other things that are going on which are, uh, you know, if, if you had visibility of those, you could make it so much more efficient and you know, arguably trying to, trying to target um, CO2 reductions for 2050. We could easily achieve those by just increasing this kind of visibility and collaboration because we can take all of that inefficiency away from the delivery network.

Speaker D: Absolutely agree. I mean there are some examples, I mean I look at perhaps the need to do local consolidation centers, um, and delivering into those so that you've uh, almost got a town or um, small region of a city, um, consolidation center into which you deliver as close to full truckload as you can. And then you're cycling around and it might be cycling around, uh, with your deliveries in your locale. And there are some examples, uh, I think in London of that occurring really now. I think there is always a difference also when we're, when we're looking at service levels and the uh, impact on sustainability, that sort of green button idea, there's a difference between want and need. Now what want is instant gratification. And uh, I want it now. You know, there's a sort of sense behind that if I do that, that I'm gonna get, wow, I can have it now, I can have it today, I can have it tomorrow. But most of the things that we want really don't need to be delivered as quickly as they are. Uh, it's not life threatening. So if, for example, I'm on a, a certain medication that if I don't get it is life threatening. And that's a need and I need that to be delivered accurately, on time and as quickly as possible. Um, but if it's something that I don't know, I'm buying a new garden known for the garden. Not that I do that, but, you know, does it matter if it arrives? Well, this side of summer would be a good idea if I really wanted, uh, to have an ideal gnome show in my, in my back garden. The summer's quite some time away, so I, you know, I could wait for my gnome.

Speaker C: Just picking up on one example. So, so we live relatively rural and I think we're a mile from our Closest local shop, very local, independently run, not for profit. All this kind of thing, make sure that we still got access. It's got the post office inside the shop and all that kind of thing. I know in our local, uh, sort of hamlet that's quite close to this place, there are, I think there's something like 10 or 12 households that get their prescriptions delivered to that local shop. So they're all arriving into pretty much the close geography. And then through a course of, you know, whether people are still active enough to go and collect it themselves from there, um, but not using a vehicle to go and get it, um, and if there's people who can't do that, then collectively as a community, we make sure that those are done. That sort of, that last leg of less than a mile, um, through some really efficient way, because we're going to go and drop them all off at the same time. Even on a very, very micro level, you can actually do quite a lot of things where somebody is capable of delivering in a slightly larger volume to a place which is very close to the ultimate recipient, um, and yet then still make that final delivery on the same length of time that it would take for a truck or a van in this instance to have gone around 10 households and actually just delivering that, uh, in one go to the local shop. Allowing people to then go and pick it up from there is equally still a valuable service. And as I say, if people can't get out, then other people will go and do that as part of the good work that we try to do to make sure that people have had daily visits and stuff. So even on really small examples, that can help. But just thinking about your green button idea, and I don't want to pick them out, but we are a customer of a particular retail website like, um, where, you know, you can pay a monthly fee and you get very quick delivery as a result of that. So some of that is even certain. Certain things will be same day, Some of it can be tomorrow by 1pm, some of it can be. Most of it is genuinely tomorrow. And then sometimes it takes slightly longer and you get an option when you check out, if you've, if you've made an order of multiple things to say, do you want to join in these together? Um, are you, are you happy to kind of merge these and maybe help them to make environmental improvement through merging through various different deliveries? I guess the option there is. Where's the option that says I don't really care when I'm going to get this? So you can just deliver me this week. And if you can do that anytime this week or even anytime this week or next week, then I'm more than happy with that. That and actually where's the extra piece that the particular retailer could offer which says if you pick these things, then what we're going to give you are, uh, some sort of green credential bonus points or something. And maybe those green bonus points become something which is after you've had so many of them actually maybe they offer you some sort of credit onto the website because you will have saved them a huge amount of effort, money potentially in those deliveries. But by being able to convert it and just say, just put this into this really big pot of orders and deliveries that you're making, because I don't care when you're going to deliver it as long as it's within seven days, um, where's the thing that actually encourages people to do that as well? So A, there isn't the option there, but B, I think there probably needs to be something in line with that to try to positively encourage people to do it.

Speaker D: I think there's um, um. And there's going to be an Ooh, our Mrs. Moment. Now, uh, forgive me, I look at our service propositions as being too rigid, too inflexible. And I wonder whether or not, uh, there needs to be a measure in supply chains of slackness. Should our supply chains become more flexible and more slack in order to be able to actually get to sustainability? Because it's allowing more thinking time. Now we know there's uh, a little bit of a, uh, revolution coming through in terms of artificial intelligence and new tools and new abilities. What I would say is that as part of that we need to break the habit of a lifetime within supply chain and start to ask superhuman questions of what the new technologies are out there. So this sort of idea of um, you know, allowing more time because you would look at it, I mean everybody across the supply chain is, you know, there are hard measures in terms of your success. You know, there is otif certainly ah, really within there as a mantra. But again that is addressing. It's a construct. It is addressing what we feel to be is great service. But the truth of the matter is it is the consumer that determines what they need and not the large corporations. And so the large corporations will try and interpret um, what is best for them m in terms of uh, efficient and profitable delivery. Delivery. But that may not be what the consumer wants all the time.

Speaker C: Yeah, as you know, I'm a big advocate of sales, operations, planning, big advocate of trying to strive for improvements in forecast accuracy and how they impact on the availability of product for a consumer. But if I think about retailers, every forecast that I think I've been involved with trying to generate based on epos sales, I look at those and think that's actually relatively predictable. At a product level. Nationally, for example, it's actually quite stable. And the difficulty becomes once you get down to the sort of like the locale of a store level, and we influence this because of promotions and stuff like that, but they're increasingly predictable based on taking into account a number of causal factors for what demand is going to be driven because it's at the front of the store or it's on a shelf, or it's, uh, this depth of promotion versus that depth of promotion, even seasonality of product that, you know, we know are, um, very reactive to weather. They're all becoming more and more predictable. And at the high level of, say, a country level, they're actually really quite predictable. So the debate is about how well you can move those through a network. And that's what we've talked about before about, well, do you hold stock of some things nationally? Do you spread some of it into geographical centers? Do you spread some of that into core stores? Do you spread that into every store? Being able to create those echelons of inventory in the right way at the right level? Actually, you get to a point where the supply of material and availability of products for an end consumer ought to be an awful lot more predictable. And why we see empty shelves for certain products, it's usually because somebody's made some sort of error down the way, and naturally you remove that out of the mix. And maybe in the move to using AI for a few more of these calculations, you take away some of those errors. I maybe like to think that you still need to have some humans to check that. The computer's not suggesting something which doesn't make any sense at all. But actually your availability of product ought to be capable of being able to respond to most of those challenges. And I don't see why it wouldn't actually be able to be a really high level of availability.

Speaker D: So I think that could be, uh, a really interesting subject to cover across a complete podcast, because it's complex, because I agree with you in terms of. There is a, um, Pavlovian approach. People generally buy the same things each week. Uh, they buy them in the same quantities each week. It is quite predictable. If you look at really how manufacturers behave, uh, they know at certain seasons in the year there might be uplift in demand. In certain holiday periods there's uplift in demand. And roughly it follows a pattern. And I think it is uh, looking at this logically and saying, well, and I'm agreeing with you Keith, by the way, that uh, what is predictable, we predict and we respond to, we do that far in advance and do that as efficiently or as far in advance as it makes sense and we get the efficiency that we can. And then we then say, well, okay, what is out of the predictable, what is unpredictable? And spending more time in terms of looking at unpredictable and understanding why that would occur. But you mentioned, I mean you clearly, uh, the area of forecasting. Do you think the poor forecasting can impact sustainability?

Speaker C: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean in, I mean you've got, you've got both. I suppose the holy grail of the accurate forecast, um, is, you know, that would allow you to be able to be as sustainable as you possibly could be, um, to a pretty large extent. But you've got two extremes, haven't you? You've got something where you've under forecasted a requirement and therefore you are trying to catch up on the supply side to meet the demand. Um, and those catch up, um, activities generally lead to um, some sort of extra inefficiency in the fact that, you know, you could be making extra deliveries of a particular product in order to restock on, on that item. Um, because you, you're actually trying to do um, you know, correct on, on a given product. But I, I think I, I mean I've, I've certainly seen some really good examples where, where even if you're trying to expedite a particular product, if you've got a portfolio of products where some of the fulfillment that you're making on a given delivery is not about the actual demand. And this is your, again, your difference between need and want. Um, some of your replenishment is going to be about not necessarily fulfilling the need, but it's going to be about refilling the shelf. Um, and you could actually delay some of that replenishment in order to make the expedited shipment fit on an existing delivery. But we don't deal with that in that way. We don't have systems that, well, some people do, but not everybody has the capability to be able to say, look, I desperately need this product today or on your next replenishment I want this product. But what I actually want to do is I'm going to drop some of the other product off that delivery, um, what we tend to end up saying is I'm going to just create extra deliveries for the stuff that I really need now, but I'm just going to leave all of my previous deliveries in place because that's actually too complicated for me to mess around with. And actually you've already gone through a picking process. You might have already loaded it on the back of a truck, even so. So we tend to leave a status quo on the current base and then just put extra items onto some sort of expedited process. Um, so being able to be more flexible, and I think this was a point you brought out earlier in the conversation, being more flexible could actually improve sustainability in this way. So if you've not created a forecast with then, uh, sufficient requirement, you've got this extra replenishment. The reverse of that is true where you've created a forecast which is, uh, in excess of the requirement. The sustainability impact of that is that you're probably going to generate, particularly on perishable products, you've got the potential to create waste somewhere down the chain. And uh, that waste either creates disposal. So you've got something which is really bad for the environment where you've just got rid of something which was a perfectly good product. I mean, even when retailers, um, for example, will reduce the pricing on some sort of product, maybe they even divert things that are just completely surplus into um, food banks or places where it's going to still have some sort of consumption, there is still a huge amount of waste generated. Um, and that can, you know, is a huge impact on our overall environment and therefore the sustainability of the supply chain. Or it creates a reversal logistics flow where some things like, right, well, we haven't managed to do this and therefore we're going to send it back and you've just made, you just made an extra shipment. That just doesn't make any sense. Um, so I think there is definitely a connection between forecast accuracy, forecasting capability and creating sustainable supply chains. Because if you don't get your forecast right, you're going to end up creating something which is, is generally generating something that's much less sustainable in the outcome.

Speaker D: I think you're very right. And um, my sort of extension to that would be how well do we forecast our own demands at home? And everybody's different in terms of this. There are different approaches, but it's almost the domestic situation. So, um, because I'm a little bit sad, I'll think about, um, what we buy and have in the house with a supply chain brain on um, and I want to be as efficient and throw away as little as I possibly can as a result of that. But if you look at waste into landfill in the uk, uh, from industry, it's perhaps about half a million tons approximately, uh, each year. And that has, um, that's been a massive reduction over past because there's been taxation, um, against product going to land landfill. If you look at domestic waste, food waste going into landfill, it's about six and a half million tons a year, which is stunning at the same time as having multiple thousands of food banks in the country as well. But that by itself could be, uh, a complete podcast. So I'm going to move on. I'm going to move to our final discussion point, which is about packaging and product design. Now, looking at that, we all know our lovely friends in sales and marketing are looking to design products that look fundamentally attractive on the shelves, that might give a consumer a feeling of more for less. Uh, that might be fundamentally attractive. But in the same breath, when we're looking at it from a logistics and supply chain basis, we'll say they're going to be really quite awkward in order to be able to deliver. And really within this, I mean, yeah, there have been some key trends that we've seen. I mean, uh, based on my own home experience, all of our cleaning materials we get from a business called Smol S M M O L and they are about delivering concentrates that you can more easily and in much more recyclable packaging and reusable dispensers that you can effectively make up and you're transporting less. So what you're effectively transporting less of is water. Similarly, in terms of SodaStream, you know, you're delivering the concentrates, uh, to home and you have water on tap and you're delivering the CO2 cylinder on tap. And if fizzy drinks are, you know, what floats your boat, then arguably that is a much lower volume that's having to be transported throughout our supply chains. So what are your thoughts in that area, Keith?

Speaker C: And you've told us that we're not going to have a separate podcast on this one. Um, but yes, there are. Honestly, there are so many examples of, um, products that.

Speaker D: Did I say that?

Speaker C: Well, no. Okay, maybe, maybe, maybe I inferred that because you said it was going to be the final point of our discussion today. But, um, yeah, I mean, you touched a really raw nerve here as far as I'm concerned. Um, there are so many examples. We talked before about how the carbon target for 2050 could be achieved through better load fill of the vehicles that are uh, currently moving around the country. And I see then right back at the product design level, examples where I've got that going in the complete reverse direction. You know, I've got a box of some product and this could be anything. There are just so many examples of this. This could be a breakfast cereal, this could be tea, coffee, um, this could be cleaning products. I've seen so many examples where I'm now buying the same size box of product and I'm getting less product in it. And you know, this is really, it's consumer deception. Because what trying to say is I think I'm going to get away with the fact that I used to put 30 of these in this box and now I'm going to put 28 in. And probably, and I've experienced this from some of my FMCG background, I think that there's an argument to say that this is all driven by, you know, there are generally inflation driven increases in cost which lead to the point where the pricing of the product inside the box, the ultimate product that the consumer is looking to use is starting to get higher. And, and then collectively the understanding that actually something that then maybe I used to pay, let's say I paid four pounds for something. I don't want to break the four pound barrier because everybody is charging four pounds for this. But now I have to charge four pounds but then I have to put maybe two less in that box or I have to take out 5% of what I used to put in it because the cost of what uh, I've just put inside that box, it's got higher. So now for the price point of pound four to make sense and the retailer to, to make what they think is their right margin, the manufacturer to make what they think is their right margin, uh, collectively actually let's put in a little bit less into that box. And as far as I'm aware the only legislation that exists on this is something that I think the phrase is the slack fill regulation, um, which means that you're not meant to try to mislead consumers, customers. You know, you can't put a huge box and put virtually nothing in it. You have to have something that is kind of a representative box size for what you're trying to stick in it. Now typically that can go anywhere from about 60 to 80% fill of the actual consumer packaging. And there'll be all kinds of reasons why people will, uh, why manufacturers may argue that we can't make something 100% full. Because actually our process means that when we're actually manufacturing it, we throw all this stuff in this box and it naturally settles. So they have to account for the fact that it can be very full when they actually pack it. And then as it settles and works its way around the supply chain, it actually sort of decreases in its fill level. I get that and I understand that. But taking a box which used to hold 50 of something and use exactly the same box to now put 40 inside it, in my head is like, you've just increased my logistics requirement by 25%. Because all of a sudden now if the consumer demand for the thing, for the item which, you know, you're selling 40 of uses of something. I used to sell 50 uses in the same consumer pack. I used to put 12 of those maybe in a box. I used to put however many boxes on the pack pallet. So along the way you've now just taken just, just from this one simple decision about trying to maintain a price point, trying to make it look good on the shelf, keeping the same sort of packaging, maybe misleading the customer and deceiving them potentially in the fact that now I've just put 40 in instead of 50. Now I've got to a point where, uh, you're going to have to send 25% more trucks to move this around around. Because I've just inserted a load of fresh air into the end package. And it's like, I just don't get that. I really don't get that because these are the same companies that are trying to make sustainability arguments on their own website. These are the same companies who are talking to retailers about the fact that here's us helping to give you sustainable solutions and the retailers are trying to be as sustainable as possible, but then they accept the fact that they've just increased, they've just created fresh air. And I just cannot get my head around that. And as I say, it's a real, it's a bugbear of mine. You can tell by the way I've just ranted on this, but I just don't, don't understand why we would make that decision because it's just completely against what is in the right mind for the consumers and for the planet. I'm going to stop at that point. I'm going to stop at that point, Malcolm, because I'm sure that you probably want to control me.

Speaker D: No, uh, I think it's hugely, it's hugely relevant. And, um, yes, I have seen cases of that happen on multiple occasions through my career. Really within fmcg, I think it's not just the fill, it's actually the fundamental design of packaging that can lead to making things uh, less sustainable to transport and more likely to have damage because damage by itself is, is, you know, if you've got to go and throw away half a pallet of something as a result of it's, you know, it's gone over in a load, then that by itself is not sustainable. You've made all the effort in order to be able to create something and you're going to have to make all that effort all over again, which has an impact. So.

Speaker C: And you've got the impact and the cost of disposing of this because nobody's going to take. You're nobody in their right mind. Oh well, perhaps some people will, but that nobody's going to accept the uh. Well actually, you know that, that pallet just went over and all of these boxes are damaged and they all look like rubbish. That's actually still really usable product. I mean this is me and my Yorkshire history coming out, but that is still usable. But the fact that you might be talking about food stuff as an example, the reverse logistics chain of uh, getting something back into. We put legislation that says you can't, you can't do this because we've no idea whether that's fallen over and it's been impregnated by something else. We don't know whether or not something's happened to it in that process. So we can't integrate that uh, back into the forwards chain. It's where all of the stuff appears in, I don't know, market trading, you know, where all that comes from. But at its worst it just goes straight into landfill. Because if we make poor decisions over, uh, packaging design as an example, you just generate a, uh, whole heap of extra work, redelivery of the same stuff all over again. I still remember, and I won't say the company, but I still remember that there was a really big driving philosophy in one of the companies that I've worked for about ISO modularity. And to those who have maybe not heard about it, it is all about trying to create the product, the unit product that the consumer has creating that, ah, in a way which you can have the creativity of the design design, you can have all of the marketing bells and whistles, but ultimately what we're trying to do is create something which then fits into a box which is a fairly standard box and that box, which is fairly standard box, fits into a palletization unit and the Palletization unit can sit on, um, whether it's a European standard or a UK standard pallet. But those palletization units can fit onto a pallet in a way, which means that they're stable cable, they interlock, you alternate the layers and ultimately you get to a point where the consumer unit has helped you to create something which is efficient in the shipment density. It's efficient in terms of the least damage that will occur through the delivery. And it's efficient in the way that then you've got storage density, you've got costs, you've got shipment costs and warehousing costs. It just makes a huge amount of sense. But you have to do very much as long as you can take that in the reverse direction that says, look, if I want this palette to look like this, I take it in these squares. So it's like 40 x 60 cm3 m squares, the rectangles, in fairness. But you take that down into. I can put multiple boxes inside that footprint. And as long as you carry on going down and you start to put consumer units that fit within one of those boxes, that all makes a huge amount of sense. And we've seen weird and wonderful packaging designs between arenas. Um, I, I still love the example of the cube watermelon in, in Japan. I mean, I don't know if you've seen this here. Look, look it up on the Internet.

Speaker D: No, I have.

Speaker C: They are by far and away the largest selling item, you know, largest selling watermelon items. And by the way, they tie little bows on them and stuff to make them really pretty. But in Japan they make watermelons that are cubes by growing them in plastic boxes to constrain them because they don't roll around, they don't damage, they're more efficient over space and um, frankly they still taste the same. And it's like, why would you ever grow something which is a, ah, spherical watermelon, um, which is then going to just roll around? You've got to pack them into. You see these great big, almost like a tote kind of container. You're damaging the ones at the bottom because they're stacked on the top of each other. You've got a huge potential for wastage out of that process. It's like not think about some of those stuff and even that extreme is it's not going into really packaging, but, but it is actually about understanding the product. And does anybody really care whether their watermelon is shaped in a sphere instead of a cube? Because ultimately they want to taste watermelon and if the watermelon is good tasting, they don't care.

Speaker D: But yes, now I'm getting excited about the cubic potato. Now you've mentioned that. Just imagine cubic potatoes.

Speaker C: See what m. Well, I don't know if that's, that's, that's a bit of a challenge, but uh, there are so many examples of this.

Speaker D: Think, think about the chips. I mean, you know, for anybody that's from the U.S. um, chips are our fatter fries than actually they're nicer. Sorry folks, but they just are. So if you had a cubic potato, you could make some wonderful, uh, if you like homemade chips, easy to slice up and to do that sort of double frying of them, you know, they'd be wonderful. So I think on that shocking thought about, um, cubic potatoes, I'm not sure how easy they'd be to peel but, or whether or not you should peel them. On that shocking thought, I'm going to draw the podcast to a close and thank Keith very, very much for his input. It really is appreciated. What I haven't said earlier today I spoke about my own forthcoming birthday, but today is actually the seventh birthday of Laguna. So, uh, Luguru is the logistics and supply chain consultancy that I founded. It's been an amazing journey so far. You know, we've turned over, uh, a few million in that time. Uh, we've kept a number of people really busy. I know that we've kept clients happy in terms of our different think about things. We are a little bit of a, uh, Marmite consultancy. So for those that don't know, Marmite is a yeast based product that either people like or hate. And so when something is Marmite, people either really love us or they go, no, that's not for us. And I'm perfectly comfortable with that. But the past seven years have been a fantastic journey and everybody said that if you start your own business, it's a roller coaster. And they weren't wrong. They really went wrong, Keith. And um, I'm sure you can attest to this, the sort of glories of it. So I'm happy to share the birthday of Laguru with my good buddy Keith who, um, ah, are we grumpy old supply chain? Chain man? I don't know.

Speaker C: Yeah, something like that. Yes. No, well, actually I didn't, I didn't know that, you know, you m pointing it out. It just made me realize that actually, you know, there are so many of these, I don't know, supply chain philosophies and designs that, you know, we've been going at these for probably 20 years and we've done some really well, but we've done plenty. But there are still so many examples that you know, that's actually what keeps you young. So you know, I didn't realize that A, you were personally, you know, heading towards, towards a milestone birthday. I don't actually realize that it was seven years. I thought it was perhaps longer that you'd had uh, the Guru going. But they're all testimony to the fact that A, you, you seem to be younger than you are, uh, but because you probably just enthusiastically trying to still fix loads of supply chain problems. And then B, the guru seems to have been around for much longer than it has because actually you've got so many requirements to fulfill. You know, so many people could come and get some advice from you. I know you've, you've recently launched the Guru Pulse which is how to do this on a sort of really bite sized way. I can't see A, how young you are in the Guru, but B, I can't see how old you are as a person. That's a complete dichotomy. I know. But um, no, thank you uh, for letting me share in this with this podcast.

Speaker D: No, I couldn't think of anybody better to do it and I think the view is ah, about life is be useful. Um, that's the most important thing. I don't have the same concept about retirement as maybe I had let's say 30 years ago, you know, this idea of that it's this leisure period. What I feel as we grow older is about having choices to do the things that you really love. And I really love logistics. I really love supply chain Pulse came out of the fact that I actually care about the fact that last year in the UK over 600 of our uh, smaller logistics businesses basically went bankrupt. And what I wanted to do within that in terms of Pulse is to say, well, okay, everybody hates consultancy, but actually everybody appreciates good advice uh, from a spirit of kindness. And that is what is behind Pulse. You know, what we want to be able to do is to try and help as many people avoid the indignity of uh, having a business fail. And the one thing about being part of the older generations, we've been around this cycle so many damn times before and um, we can shortcut an awful lot of the mistakes that are being made. We can get from mistakes and inefficiencies and challenges into solutions a hell of a lot quicker than maybe people if they're just trying and struggling. Along by themselves. And so there is a spirit as we grow older that perhaps we become a little less worried about mortgage payments, we become a little less worried about not having the money to be able to survive, and a little bit more focused on what we believe to be is doing the right thing and doing the things that we really and truly enjoy. And, you know, the logistics and supply chain industry has been immensely kind to me and I'm very grateful to it. The other opportunity is to try and combine together and see what changes and what wonders we can make. That's an enormous thrill. The fact that I talk to people around the globe every week is fascinating to me. I'm never lonely. I'm probably contained in my office too often. But it's like anything that you're passionate about, you don't really want to stop doing it. So, Keith, it's been a pleasure as always. Thank you very much. And I think we've got a fair bit of new content to think about in terms of sustainability for the balance of 2025. So with that, I'd like to thank Keith again for his dedication, uh, to talk to this command. And thank you for listening to Alas, the Logistics Collective Podcast. The Logistics Collective is available on, um, logisticscollective.com all of the available podcast channels were actually available and on there as well. And please, if you're on the podcast channels like, and follow us so that you can get the updates as to the new podcasts that we're about to produce. And, um, one of my next podcasts is going to be talking to, um, three people all about sustainability. So I'm really looking forward to to that. So thank you and goodbye.

Speaker B: You can contact us by email@podcastogisticscollective.com or by leaving a voice message on our website, logisticscollective.com the podcast is a production by Luguru, who are part of Tompkins Ventures, a global collaboration of advisory, matchmaking and investment partners, solving global logistics and supply chain challenges more quickly and cost effectively than our competition.