The Greenery’s local logistics orchestrating
This case study shows how supply chain performance can be improved by centrally
organizing and bundling the transport from a large number of vegetable growers to
central transport hubs and onwards.
Context
The Greenery is one of the leading European concerns in the vegetable, fruit and
mushroom sector, with an annual turnover of circa 1.6 billion. Its main activity is to
provide a complete range of vegetables, fruit and mushrooms to supermarket chains in
more than 60 countries in Europe, North America and the Far East throughout the year.
Other major target groups are wholesale businesses, catering companies and industrial
processing companies.
The Greenery is a market-oriented sales company whose shares are owned by the
producers who are members of the horticultural cooperative VoedingsTuinbouw
Nederland (VTN). The 1,700 producer-owned member companies market all their
products via The Greenery.
The transport of products from the 1,700 producers (referring to about 2,000 physical
locations) to one of the Greenery distribution centers used to be the responsibility of the
growers, who had to decide for themselves what transport modality, timing and route
were optimal. As a result all thinkable modalities, times and routes were applied resulting
in a huge complexity and inefficiencies in the system: a lot of half-truck loads, multiple
transporters at the same time in one lane, waiting times at the warehouse docks, etc.
Over the years, the Greenery has implemented a number of changes to improve its supply
chain performance.