HUL's Kwality Walls wins prestigious Cold Chain Industry Award

Company Brief

Mumbai, 02 July, 2015

Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) has been declared as the winner at The Cold Chain Industry Awards 2015, in the category - ‘Best Quality & Risk Management Project’. These awards were presented by the Future Supply Chain during the 4th Cold Chain Strategy Summit held in June 2015, in Mumbai.

Kwality Walls has adopted a proactive way of managing quality in depots’ warehousing operations. Its quality management system is unique to the Indian market and hitherto never been deployed in the GTM (go to market) area for warehousing operations. Earlier, Kwality Walls followed the audit-based approach for conformance to food safety standards.

Commenting on the win, Sumit Mathur, General Manager- Ice Creams and Frozen Desserts, HUL, said, “Kwality Walls is committed to providing best-in-class products to its consumers. Our commitment to quality encompasses our entire value chain, right from product development through distribution to retail. This award is a testimony to our commitment to ensure that every time our consumers pick up a Kwality Walls’ product, they take a bite of happiness! ”

The nomination-procedure: Every nomination for The Cold Chain Industry Awards 2015 was researched and thoroughly evaluated by research partner, Worxogo. The nomination-process focused on the quality assurance and control practices in Cold Chain Logistics and assessed the quality integrity of the products as well as storage and transportation facilities.

How HUL went about it: A quality deployment plan was developed to improve the quality of warehousing operations in GTM India for Cold Chain. The assessment criteria were defined basis global Unilever standards (which are derived from BRC – British Regulatory Consortium). The Operational Quality Review mechanism (global warehousing and transportation standards) was launched which involved deep dive to understand how quality practices, systems and processes are employed across warehouses. This led to continuous improvement in enhancing delivered quality across the value chain.

Cold Chain is a very important aspect of business that provides ideal storage conditions for perishables from the point of origin to the point of consumption. It also preserves the product’s characteristics, active ingredients, freshness and nutritive value. Cold Supply Chain comprises refrigerated warehouses and transportation considering available market resources of trucks, rail, ships etc. It is imperative to focus on end-to-end delivery of product quality on shelf, for FMCG companies to drive growth and consumer focused Cold Supply Chain. The Indian Cold Chain Industry Market will be worth INR 624 Billion by 2017 and is expected to grow in coming years, with a capacity of 47 million tonnes. (Source: National Summit on Cold Chain, ASSOCHAM).

For further information, please contact:

Prasad Pradhan

Email : mediacentre.hul@unilever.com

Phone: 022-39832429