ASDA looks at a major produce supplier shakeup

Asda needs to get rid of around a third of its underperforming produce suppliers according to its category boss, interviewed in this weeks edition of the Fresh Produce Journal.

Despite chief executive Andy Bond’s recent calls for “flair and not fear” from suppliers, Nick Burr, business unit director for produce, said that, while in general, the retailer had good relationships with its suppliers, there was still room for improvement.

He said it could divide its supplier base into thirds. “A third of our suppliers are probably the best in the country and can’t do enough for us. If a store runs out of produce, they’ll jump in a car to drop some supplies off, they’re superb.”

While relations with the middle third were “stand-offish”, he said the bottom third is more of a problem. “These are the suppliers which we need to get rid of. I’m not talking about stripping out, we just need to replace a third of them. These people are not growers – we’re talking about the middlemen.”

“At the moment, we probably have around 26 middlemen on the UK side. Do you need 26? Probably not, but then just having one is probably not enough. We need to get somewhere between the two. We’re discussing that, but is it going to be in the next 18 months to two years? Probably not.”

Despite this, he said the supply base had improved considerably: “Service and quality are much better than they were two years ago.”

 Source: www.freshinfo.com