More Economical and Sustainable Platform Provided
CHEP, the supply chain solutions company, has been working with South African wine producer and exporter Origin Wine for more than a decade in a managed pallet pooling program that has shown to be economical and environmentally more sustainable than white wood pallets and other delivery platforms.
Origin Wine, based in Stellenbosch, in South Africa’s Western Cape wine-producing region, has grown from a two-man business 17 years ago to become a global operation with nearly 350 employees, selling in excess of 40 million litres of wine a year. Wines are exported to the UK, Russia, the Netherlands, China, Canada, Sweden, USA, Denmark and Germany, to name a few.
Privately owned Origin Wine is a fully vertically integrated operation, sourcing grapes and wines throughout the world. Satellite offices are located in the UK, Sweden, Canada and Switzerland. The company’s main brands are Stormhoek and Grand Vin de Stellenbosch.
Lise Ewins, Marketing Manager, said, “Two major trends we are seeing at the moment are premiumisation and sustainability. People are willing to pay more for a higher-quality product. Our challenge is to continuously explore new innovations, ideas and markets. Sustainable production is a major concern and requires our ongoing commitment. We see it as our responsibility to work in partnership with our clients to decrease the carbon footprint for the products we trade.”
Origin Wine production is centred on a 16 hectare site in Stellenbosch, which includes 10.7 hectares of premium vineyard, a blending cellar with 64 tanks and 3.2 million litres capacity, three production lines of accumulated capacity of 10,000 bottles an hour including a bag-in-box (BIB) filling line with accumulated capacity of 1080 bags per hour, a fully accredited laboratory and a 2,200 m2 warehouse.
Colleen Carstens, Origin Wine Planning & Logistics Manager, said, “CHEP is our preferred method of dispatching due to the economical and sustainability aspects that pallet pooling provides, as well as CHEP’s excellent service. The fact that CHEP recognises our challenges and has assisted Origin Wine by offering a competitive cost structure for this very challenging year proves their commitment as a logistics partner,” she noted.
“With the current emphasis on sustainability, I believe pallet pooling will become the preferred method of pallet distribution,” observed Ms. Carstens. “CHEP makes it their business to understand their clients. That’s why we’ve built a good partnership with them over the past decade.”
Chris Perumal, CHEP Director, FMCGs, CHEP South Africa, said, “Origin Wine has been on a program to replace one-way and white wood pallets with CHEP pooled pallets. The cost to purchase white pallets has been steadily increasing, while sub-standard quality and lower durability add a measure of risk to logistics operations. CHEP pallets are of consistent quality and strength, minimizing the chance of product damage,” he added.
“CHEP has a commitment to providing the most sustainable platform on the market” states Nomathemba Mhlanga, Senior Sustainability Manager at CHEP. “Here, we share Origin Wine’s vision of changing lives in the communities that we both operate in”. CHEP and Origin Wine are currently engaged in talks over how to empower wine farm workers to learn more skills and curb under-development through a focus on Early Childhood Development in wine areas.
Origin Wine’s commitment to the community in which it operates speaks for itself. The company’s Fairhills project, its internationally accredited Fairtrade social upliftment project, was established in the Breedekloof in 2005. The aim is to create revenue through the company’s wine brands to uplift the people within the communities by growing their skills base and providing life changing facilities. It currently helps support over 2,000 people in South Africa, Chile and Argentina.
