Bakkavor Group has commenced a 90 days consultation period with 178 staff at its English Village Salads subsidiary in East Yorkshire, England, about the future viability of the business due to a sustained period of reduced demand. The move follows the announcement made by EVS in May 2011 that a major customer had elected to take a substantial part of their salads procurement to their in-house operation. This, combined with the ongoing challenging trading environment has continued to have a significant effect on the volume of business managed through EVS throughout the remainder of 2011.

Bakkavor Group is a leading international food manufacturing company specialising in fresh prepared foods and produce, with 57 factories and 20,000 employees in ten countries. It is one of the UK’s leading convenience foods suppliers.

Bakkavor Group, the UK convenience food manufacturer, is selling Bakkavor Traiteur, a non-core, fish spreads business based in France, to Alfesca, a leading European producer and supplier of convenience, fine seafood and premium products to retailers and food-service providers. The sale is for an undisclosed consideration.

Participants in a scheme run by ECR (Efficient Consumer Response) UK are well on the way to achieving targets set last autumn to prevent and recover waste in the FMCG supply chain in the UK. By thinking differently about waste when looking at products, packaging design, range and forecasting, consumer goods manufacturers and retailers have prevented 38,000 tonnes of waste from being created in the first place and redirected a further 115,000 tonnes away from landfill and sewer.

In total, 33 leading food and grocery companies announced last autumn they are voluntarily committing to prevent 75,000 tonnes of waste being created by the end of 2012. All signatories are IGD members and leading retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers or food service operators. They have signed up to the target to totally remove this volume of waste from their supply chains.

Joanne Denney-Finch, chief executive of IGD.

The industry has made great strides in recovering waste, rather than disposing of it. To drive this progress even further the companies have pledged to meet an extra target. They have challenged themselves to divert a further 150,000 tonnes of waste from disposal, mainly from landfill and sewerage, to more productive outputs such as anaerobic digestion.

The food and drink manufacturers participating in the scheme include ABF, Bakkavor Group, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Dairy Crest, Gerber Juice Company, H J Heinz, Kraft Foods, Mars Chocolate UK, Molson Coors Brewing Company (UK), Muller Dairy (UK),

Nestle UK, Northern Foods, PepsiCo UK & Ireland, Robert Wiseman Dairies, Unilever UK, United Biscuits, VION Food UK and Warburtons.

“Food and grocery businesses are constantly striving to reduce waste from their operations and the majority of the supply chain’s product and packaging waste is now recycled or recovered, rather than disposed of,” points out Joanne Denney-Finch, chief executive of IGD. “IGD has brought the industry together to draw up, commit to and deliver these challenging targets – and the industry is making great progress.”