Based in Oakdale, near Blackwood, and employing around 100 people, the Just Love Food Company sell their range of allergy friendly celebration cakes to many of the UK’s biggest retailers and food service outlets, including Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose and Booker.
The company was established in 2010 by Mike and Karen Woods when they noticed that there was a gap in the market for nut free celebration cakes to cater for families with children suffering from nut allergies. Over the years, they have expanded their product portfolio to include gluten free, milk free, egg free and vegan cakes.
Having become increasingly aware of the potential sustainability and cost benefits of waste reduction, Just Love Foods were signposted towards support from the waste reduction experts at ZERO2FIVE Food Industry Centre.
ZERO2FIVE provided Just Love Foods with support for two of their most popular lines, carrying out a diagnostic review of both process and operational performance to understand and highlight potential product losses and production inefficiencies that could lead to increased costs and lost time and labour.
The diagnosis was carried out over several days, by auditing the production processes, weighing Just Love’s products at various stages, carrying out time and motion studies, and speaking with staff on the shop floor to fully understand the products from goods-in through to despatch.
Benefits of the Support
ZERO2FIVE’s support helped the company to better understand their processes and waste streams. The data was reported back to Just Love Foods in a way that could help them quickly and clearly understand the impact of waste on their business and highlight areas for future improvements.
ZERO2FIVE’s professional approach of measuring waste at each step of our production process and putting value to that waste has really helped us to understand the value of the opportunity. Project HELIX offers a very open and collaborative approach to sharing knowledge and questioning why waste occurs. By sharing their expertise, it will allow us to improve our capabilities and make waste reduction a natural way of operating at every level of the business.”