Bartter Enterprises owns Steggles, one of Australia’s
most recognised brands and is the second largest poultry
producer in Australia, employing over 4500 employees.
From humble beginnings, the company now moves
more than two and a half million chickens every week to customers including major supermarkets Woolworths and Coles, and chain restaurants like Red Rooster, Nando’s and KFC.

This growth hasn’t been easy though, particularly in recent
years. “Growth has run at three to five per cent for decades,” explained Bartter CEO Geoff Frost, “now it’s running at one or two percent. And that’s a big change. There are a lot of urban myths out there about poultry – about bird flu most recently, but also the use
of hormones, antibiotics, cages… and as a result, what has been a long-term growing industry has faltered a bit.”

Add to this increasing inflation and soaring grain prices, andyou begin to realise that Bartter is fighting an uphill battle. “When you haven’t got any significant growth, you need a strategy to take costs out of your business and make yourself more efficient” said Geoff. “We’re now trying to take an old-style family business and turn it into a modern business with modern processes; to turn
it around and make it the best in our industry – best-of-breed.” In order to achieve such high aspirations, Bartter formulated a single-minded framework of operational excellence, working with the mission statement: “the way we are today is not good enough for tomorrow”. This meant improving every facet of the business, focusing on the strategic goals of cost management, people & safety and process efficiency as part of an overall Bartter
Business Excellence program. The new hard-line approach lead to Bartter’s re-evaluation of its procurement capability, the current sourcing practices and, most importantly, its suppliers, addressing any weaknesses in the supply chain.

National procurement manager for Bartter Steggles, Eugene
Visione, joined the company in November 2006. In his role, he was given the task of reviewing Bartter’s procurement program to align the function with the core objectives of the Bartter Business Excellence program. No small task, given that the company has 11 sites operating in five different Australian states. All areas of thirdparty spend were assessed, and in late 2006, with some issues
becoming increasingly apparent, a complete review of Bartter’s material handling providers took place.

“If Bartter are to achieve operational excellence in procurement,” explained Eugene, “then we must aggressively pursue our core business objectives in all our supply relationships. This is particularly evident in a material handling provider, as the equipment can
have a serious impact on our ability to manage costs, maintain process efficiencies and comply with safety regulations”.

When reviewing any aspect of a business, there are quite often concerns that need to be addressed in order to meet targets. In Bartter’s case, there was an obvious problem in the majority of Bartter’s materials handling equipment, with the downtime experienced at one particular plant becoming an increasing issue. “We were using three different suppliers at different locations around the country. In terms of performance, all the northern sites (Sydney, Hunter and Queensland) had a lot of room for improvement. At one of our plants there were quite
serious operational issues. The equipment we were using would go down at crucial times, in critical parts of the plant where we load our live chickens. It’s a pretty tough environment, but our business – or any business for that matter – simply can’t afford to have continued down time. Something needed to be done. So we put our national material handling requirements out to tender,” said Eugene.

The process of tendering for the Bartter business meant being able to provide equipment that would work under some of the most challenging conditions in the country, from cool rooms to the dusty environment of loading live chickens at the processing plant. The trucks had to be reliable. “We have cool room environments, where our fleet needs to be working in cold environments 24 hours a day,” he said. “But probably the most difficult part of our business, from the materials handling side of things, is the
live bay area where we’re loading live birds into the conveyor system. There’s a lot of manure, which is very corrosive. There’s moisture from the misting to keep the birds cool during summer and, in the past, that’s caused a lot of damage to vehicles - it’s where the previous suppliers fell down and had a lot of downtime. So for us, it’s very critical that the vehicles are robust enough to
stand up to that environment.”

The tender process was very thorough and involved trialling several suppliers over a period of three months. On the advice of Joseph Dalo, group operations manager (Northern), one of those invited to tender was Linde. Joseph had been impressed by the Linde trucks from the experience of the Bartter southern sites (Riverina, Melbourne and Perth), and Eugene diligently took up
his advice: “Linde trucks were already being used at the Griffith and Perth sites,” explained Eugene, “and you could tell by looking at the uptime figures from those sites that the trucks were reliable. And when I spoke to the site operators who’d been using them, they were very impressed and very happy with the trucks. Within Bartter, Linde already had a reputation for excellent operator comfort, higher productivity and lower running costs.
Recommendations by the Bartter’s personnel using the Linde trucks were a great starting point.”

Bartter needed more than just highly performing trucks from the company that won the tender. They needed ongoing reliability and exceptional service levels that would ensure the equipment could consistently meet the demands of an operationally excellent business.
“At Bartter, we were not looking for a supplier of materials
handling equipment,” Eugene said. “We were tendering for a provider of materials handling services. We viewed the materials handling equipment as just another unit operation of the processing plant, if the plant was operating then so to the trucks. Of course the individual trucks would not be up 24/7, however, if a truck goes down then another would be available as a back up. If necessary, a vehicle may be pulled out even before it’s due for maintenance all to ensure Bartter always had equipment available to meet the
processing demands. If we don’t have those trucks running, then the plant can’t run because the birds aren’t being loaded, and the cages are just too big for people to move by hand. Linde saw the level of service as critical and agreed that Bartter did not just need trucks to transport products from A to B, but a service that guaranteed
the transport of those products.”

Throughout the process, the tendering suppliers provided Bartter with sufficient evidence as to which equipment would meet Bartter’s needs. However, according to Joseph Dalo, there was really only one company to go with: “Linde was hands down the best performing equipment with internal references as the most reliable equipment suited to meet all our operational requirements. We had been burnt in the past with inferior vehicles and poor service. We saw that the Linde trucks (with the backing of the Linde service team) could stand up to the environment that we were going to expose them to and make it through the entire lease term, which previous suppliers had not been able to provide”.

Service levels were of course not the only issue that needed to be considered, cost was also a big factor. “Linde not only met all our requirements with regards to service and truck reliability, they were also very competitive on a month-to-month basis and presented the
lowest total cost of ownership”, explained Eugene Visione.

It is now six months on since Bartter signed on Linde as its national materials handling service provider. As the equipment is rolled out to each site, Bartter is yielding the benefits of consolidating to one manufacturer, one management team, and a partner that offers the flexibility to change its equipment between sites to meet the ebb and flow of the operation. In Linde, Bartter have found a partner that is aligned to its company strategy of operational excellence.

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