Producers share JF Hillebrand prize

Two wine producers, Constellation Wines of Australia and Concha y Toro from Chile, have been declared joint winners of JF Hillebrand’s annual Supply Chain Partner award.

Presented at the London International Wine Fair yesterday, the award recognises companies which best work with wine industry logistics suppleir JF Hillebrand, to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of delivering products to their UK and other European customers.

Constellation Wines, Australia’s largest exporter of branded wine by volume, has been recognised for a variety of initiatives including introducing a different container load configuration for a Dutch supermarket group to suit its particular needs and increase loading by about 10%, and using detailed analysis of transport patterns to better anticipate customer demand.

Concha y Toro, the other winner, said that one of the more noticeable improvements from working within the JF Hillebrand Supply Chain Management model has been delivery service levels of 100% over the last 12 months, improved from a previous performance which was less than 90%.

Rob Turvey, managing director of supply chain management at JF Hillebrand, said: “Both companies demonstrated such a range of improvements and contributions to improving their supply chains to customers that the judges could not choose between them.”

Paul Konar, export director at Viña Concha y Toro, thanked JF Hillebrand for recognising the company’s efforts in making the consolidation centres in Chile an efficient tool for its customers in Europe. “Your recognition gives us a lot of motivation to keep improving our service standards.”

Simon Williams, VP supply chain at Constellation, said: “We are delighted to be joint winners of this year’s award. I think that the work that we have achieved together with Hillebrand this year will provide an opportunity for greater collaboration as we discover more about what we each can deliver to this partnership.”

The winner can be any company within the SCM network of over 600 companies, including suppliers, retailers and agents. JF Hillebrand nominates a shortlist of finalists and each company completes a detailed assessment of its strategy, operations, communications and relationship with supply chain partners.

Trade lane finalists were:
• Concha y Toro from Chile,
• Bodega Norton from Argentina,
• Louis Jadot from France,
• Bidoli Vini from Italy,
• Bodegas Chivite from Iberia,
• Constellation Wines from Australia,
• Yealands Estate Wines Ltd from New Zealand
• Distell from South Africa

Turvey said that both winners embraced and practiced true supply chain collaboration. “This brought them close to their customers, so they better understand their needs and how to adapt the supply chain to fit and meet such demands and needs.”

Alan Lodge, 20.05.2010