Accolade Wines’ The Park are no strangers to the Sustainable Manufacturer trophy at The Manufacturer MX Awards. Indeed, this wine bottling manufacturer from Bristol has won the award three years on the bounce. The Manufacturer’s Tom St John caught up with Richard Lloyd, General Manager of European Supply Chains for Accolade Wines, in the hope of him spilling some secrets.
Richard starts by informing me that a lot of people won’t have heard of Accolade. You will have heard of brands such as Hardy’s and other household names such as Echo Falls and Kumala from South Africa. These are all brands of Accolade, making it the largest wine company in the UK.
Richard oversees a long supply chain, and given that these brands are predominantly from new world countries, where the core ingredient comes from is the critical element. This company is the proud owner of Europe’s largest wine bottling plant in Bristol, which is called The Park. A couple of years ago, the business made the facility independent from Accolade Wines, because it packages for a number of other major brands and retailer own label brands. Accolade is the biggest customer of our The Park’s supply chain, but the rebrand reflects the company’s independence.
Around 20% of the wine drunk in the UK is bottled at The Park – that’s around a million bottles of wine a day. “We’ve got a lot of friends! Wine normally makes you lots of friends,” says Richard.
Why do you think you’ve picked up the Sustainable Manufacturer award three years running?
RL: Firstly, we’re absolutely thrilled with this. We won the overall Manufacturer of the Year Award in 2018, and I think our sustainable credentials have been a key contributor to winning other categories in the past.
I think it’s been about investment, but not in the classic sense in terms of money. There are some investment projects that probably grab headlines, for instance, we’ve built the largest wind turbine that we were allowed on our site. However, it’s more about the investment in time with our people.
I believe that we’ve won the Sustainable Manufacturer award three years running because we have 500 people here on site, that’s 500 people that have bought into the sustainable aspects of the business. Therefore, it gives continual improvement.
Since we won the award last year, we’ve moved on. We’ve got closed loop 3D printing. What I mean by that is we’ve now got a waste stream of some plastic backing which our labels come on. That used to leave site with zero waste to landfill – it would be made into traffic cones. Now, it’s being extruded on site into filament that we’re then 3D printing our spare parts with.
There’s just a frightening momentum of engagement from our people. To get it started, I think the leadership needs to be really active and show this isn’t just a strap line for a tick box in a company brochure. We’ve managed to show that to our workforce – we did that years ago. Everyone is onboard – the CEO signs it all off and our team here comes up with the ideas and brings it all to life.
This journey sounds like it’s been a tough one – from winning heart and minds of people to convincing stakeholders. It’s taken some persistence, hasn’t it?
RL: Persistence is definitely the right term to use here. It’s not been easy, you’re absolutely right. You have to make sure that it’s a core belief of yours. Times have been tough – with supply chain uncertainty over the last 12 months, I’ve never known it to be so tough. But you’ve got to make sure that the sustainable element you want is true. We’ve actually benefited from this, because sustainability has gone up employees list of priorities, much like it has with consumers.
I think it’s only been within the last two years where someone will actually make a decision at point of purchase and look out for a product with a lower carbon footprint, or check that the packaging is sustainable and so on. This means it’s gone up the hierarchy, it’s front and centre of a number of people’s decision making. Therefore, if you’re not in the game, you’re going to lose out. So that’s been a main driver in convincing people.
What were some of the biggest factors in reaching your sustainable achievements?
RL: We’re constantly keeping the momentum going, as I mentioned earlier. There are lots of things we’ve done that we can be very proud of as a business. We’ll spend money on a 3D printer, but then it’s about maximising it’s use within the site. How do you then really bring the return on investment not only financially, but also from the carbon footprint side.
We are the first business in the UK this year to send a pallet out with no plastic at all. A lot of companies have taken plastic out of the primary packaging i.e. the bottle, and secondary packaging i.e. the case. But, we’ve gone a step further by removing plastic for the stretch wrap that goes around the pallets that then get sent to retailers.
Acknowledging all the different stakeholders was important. At the end of the day, we are a business and we have to make a profit. Some people will challenge me by asking what I’m driven by; is it the project to have the biggest wind turbine? Or is it the payback that it gives you? I’m comfortable with my own morals, they’re both important – running a sustainable financial business that looks after employees and running a sustainable business that has a positive impact on the planet.
Pretty much everything we do will have a financial benefit as well as a sustainable one. We’re about to put solar panels on the roof here. We know what price we’re going pay for solar, we know what price we’re going to pay for our wind turbine and we know how that price will change over the years. If you buy electricity from a national grid, over half the cost is a sort of commodity charge and that’s almost doubled in the last 12 months. These are very binary decisions. So, like I say, I will never hide the fact that there’s a financial drive as well as a sustainable drive.
This journey sounds like it’s been a tough one – from winning heart and minds of people to convincing stakeholders. It’s taken some persistence, hasn’t it?
RL: Persistence is definitely the right term to use here. It’s not been easy, you’re absolutely right. You have to make sure that it’s a core belief of yours. Times have been tough – with supply chain uncertainty over the last 12 months, I’ve never known it to be so tough. But you’ve got to make sure that the sustainable element you want is true. We’ve actually benefited from this, because sustainability has gone up employees list of priorities, much like it has with consumers.
I think it’s only been within the last two years where someone will actually make a decision at point of purchase and look out for a product with a lower carbon footprint, or check that the packaging is sustainable and so on. This means it’s gone up the hierarchy, it’s front and centre of a number of people’s decision making. Therefore, if you’re not in the game, you’re going to lose out. So that’s been a main driver in convincing people.
What were some of the biggest factors in reaching your sustainable achievements?
RL: We’re constantly keeping the momentum going, as I mentioned earlier. There are lots of things we’ve done that we can be very proud of as a business. We’ll spend money on a 3D printer, but then it’s about maximising it’s use within the site. How do you then really bring the return on investment not only financially, but also from the carbon footprint side.
We are the first business in the UK this year to send a pallet out with no plastic at all. A lot of companies have taken plastic out of the primary packaging i.e. the bottle, and secondary packaging i.e. the case. But, we’ve gone a step further by removing plastic for the stretch wrap that goes around the pallets that then get sent to retailers.
Acknowledging all the different stakeholders was important. At the end of the day, we are a business and we have to make a profit. Some people will challenge me by asking what I’m driven by; is it the project to have the biggest wind turbine? Or is it the payback that it gives you? I’m comfortable with my own morals, they’re both important – running a sustainable financial business that looks after employees and running a sustainable business that has a positive impact on the planet.
Pretty much everything we do will have a financial benefit as well as a sustainable one. We’re about to put solar panels on the roof here. We know what price we’re going pay for solar, we know what price we’re going to pay for our wind turbine and we know how that price will change over the years. If you buy electricity from a national grid, over half the cost is a sort of commodity charge and that’s almost doubled in the last 12 months. These are very binary decisions. So, like I say, I will never hide the fact that there’s a financial drive as well as a sustainable drive.
How do you convince companies and leaders to see past that initial investment stage?
RL: I think you got to get momentum – find a project that is the right scale. The first step on the journey for me wouldn’t be to go and get the largest wind turbine. Go and get some projects that visibly demonstrate to the workforce and customers that you’re serious, you’ll invest and it’s something that you’re comfortable with. Once you get the momentum, it will grow and it will give everyone confidence.
You’ve also got to be willing to invest the time – I’ve already mentioned the time we’ve taken with employees over the years to get this right. But you’ve also got to invest time in making your operation sustainable. I had a call this morning with a potential new supplier on how we might move some dry goods into our facility in returnable packaging. Three of us went along and invested our time to go and meet the supplier, we did a reference check – it took some time. You need to ask yourself whether you believe it’s going to help the business, the planet and the consumer?
My main piece of advice to businesses now, when weighing up initial cost and time would be around the consumer – that should be enough to drive you. I think this should be the main factor in pushing all of this over the line. As I’ve mentioned, people will make sustainable decisions in their purchases and that’s only going to grow. Within the food and beverage industry, people are used to having calories on packaging, I don’t think we’re far away from having information on the carbon footprint of a product. You don’t want to be that business with an ugly footprint on your product.
What would you say to other businesses thinking of entering the TMMX Awards?
RL: I think there’s a competitive edge in everyone. I actually went to these awards some 15 years ago by myself, without my team. I sat there and I watched the unity and the elation within a number of different teams. I thought to myself, we need something like that. What it offers us is it unites a team in a process – it’s good practice. I think the audit process is outstanding – the commitment of the judges is phenomenal. The site visits and the way they’re conducted gives the awards real credibility.
There are highs and lows. We’ve attended with a team of 10 people for probably 10 years now, and we’ve lost some years. So, there have been lows and therefore the highs get bigger! Let’s not hide from fun, to go after something as a team, to try and win something is fun. I would recommend it to anyone.
It’s quite funny actually, one of your team reached out to me recently and kindly asked me to be a judge for the Sustainable Manufacturer award this year. I’ve had to decline because we’re entering again! The team want to go and make it 4 in a row. I can’t stop the team from chasing those awards.
Key takeaways:
- Like any journey, starting small is always important. A big and overly ambitious project isn’t always the best way forward, tempting as it may be in the pursuit of laying down a marker for others.
- Further to this, every journey must involve buy in from people. In this case, workers seem completely onboard with making the business as sustainable as possible.
- Consumer trends will continue to lead toward sustainable products. As Richard says, you don’t want to be a business with high carbon footprint products.
- Sustainable businesses can also be profitable businesses – the two elements can co-exist, even if the initial cost of technology or projects is high.
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