ECRA Announces new Chair

The Board of the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) has elected Mr Clive Stiff as the new Chair of the Efficient Consumer Response Australasia (ECRA) Board.  

Clive, Chairman & Senior Vice President Unilever Australia, takes up the position following the resignation of Mr Gareth Edgecombe – Campbell Arnott’s President Asia Pacific.  

Clive Stiff, started his career in fast moving consumer goods in 1986 with Procter & Gamble.  He held various positions in Marketing, Sales, Strategic Planning and General Management in country, regional and global roles, with assignments in Switzerland, The Netherlands, South Africa, Belgium and France.  Clive’s last role before leaving P&G in 2008 was Chief Executive of the French business, based in Paris.  Before  joining  Unilever  in  April  2012  Clive  was  the  Managing  Director  of  Goodman  Fielder’s  Baking  Division, in Sydney. 

Clive  is  a  Fellow  of  the  Australian  Institute  of  Company  Directors  and  is  a  Non-Executive  Director  of  Foodbank NSW.    He holds an MSc in Management from the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The ECRA Board and Secretariat welcome Clive to the role.  

The Board and Secretariat would also like to acknowledge and thank Gareth for his direction and leadership over the past year as Chair of the ECRA Board. Under Gareth’s direction, ECRA has engaged broadly with the industry across key issues such as on-shelf availability, display pallets, and business to business standards.

ECRA 2013 Convention - huge success

The fifth Annual Efficient Consumer Response Australasia Supplier and Retailer Convention was held at the WatervieW in Sydney over 17 and 18 October 2013.  

Delegates took the opportunity to view presentations from local and international fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry experts and to network with colleagues, peers and business partners.

The title of the convention Innovation through Collaboration described the key theme over the two days, recognising the critical role of collaboration in driving and inspiring innovation. This sets the platform for suppliers, retailers and key stakeholders to identify strategic and tactical collaborative opportunities, recognising that innovation is becoming more central to their ongoing relevance and continued success. 

The Board of ECRA expresses its thanks to all speakers and organisers, and particularly to the delegates for making this year’s convention a success. ECRA looks forward to continuing to fulfill its role as the only industry body that brings together suppliers and retailers to promote industry. 

Download convention report here.

Winning in January - Are you ready?

Australasian major retailers have again committed to providing ECRA with outbound service level data, as well as DIFOD, following Christmas 2013 and January 2014 to facilitate an industry report into this on-shelf availability performance indicator. Availability has typically been 3-5% lower at this time of year than the balance of the year in past years and addressing the gap is a great sales opportunity for retailers and suppliers alike. 

Now is the time for discussions to make sure that collaborative plans are in place to provide the best possible scenario for ensuring stock availability into and out of retailer Distribution Centres through the Christmas, New Year and January period. 

ECRA has provided industry a toolkit to assist with this process which can be accessed here.

ECRA Launches Guidelines for Multi-Coded Pallets

Our industry is one in which there is a rapid pace of change. This facilitates the industry staying at the cutting edge by providing product to shoppers when and where required, at the best quality and value for money. The adoption and implementation of standards that govern identification, communication and receipt of products along the FMCG retail supply chain is critical in achieving efficiency and effectiveness in product supply. 

In cases where competitive advantage is gained through operational execution, rather than through proprietary intellectual property, a better and timelier outcome can be achieved by developing and implementing industry standard approaches. This is a role that ECRA regularly provides by bringing suppliers and retailers together to develop and implement optimised programs. 

Multi-coded pallets (MCP) are where multiple use-by dates/batch codes of a given SKU are consolidated onto a single pallet for distribution from a supplier to a retailer. Potential benefits include reduced handling of pallets, less space taken up in DCs storing pallets and more efficient utilisation of transport. 

In 2013, Coles and Woolworths had each piloted the receipt of MCP’s into their respective distribution centers with varying rules and requirements. Metcash has also shown an interest in potential implementation of MCP. It is clear that there is benefit to industry in implementing a single standardised approach compared to the complexity and potential for errors in managing different rules and requirements. 

As such, ECRA’s Order to Receipt Excellence Working group, consisting retailers, suppliers and GS1, has facilitated an industry standard framework for implementation of MCP to assist industry participants in gaining benefits and avoiding issues associated with MCP introduction. The ECRA Multi-Coded Pallet Guidelines were launched at the annual ECRA Supplier and Retailer Convention on 17 October 2013, and can be access by clicking here.