It’s no secret that 2020 was a year like no other. To mark International Women’s Day 2021, DCC caught up with some of the impressive women in its network of Women in STEM, to ask them about the past 12 months, and the lessons and insights they have gained in the face of the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. Across this month, we will be sharing some of their responses with you.
“In addition to the pandemic, in the last year there have been multiple factors impacting supply chains in Australia, including the worst bushfires on record, floods, trade wars, industrial action at our ports, Suez Canal blockage, and cyber-attacks, to name a few. As our supply chains have become more globalised, we need to consider not only how we build resiliency into our supply chains including using Industry 4.0 solutions, but also ensure we can make our supply chains sustainable.” – Anna Reid
Anna Reid is an engineer with considerable experience in the food sector, and she is just about to start a new exciting role (read below to find out more!). During the pandemic, she was General Manager of Operations and Supply Chain at Kinrise. Prior to joining Kinrise, Anna was General Manager – Manufacturing for Asahi Beverages ANZ, and previously also worked for HJ Heinz and George Weston Foods. In March 2020, Anna was part of the panel for our Melbourne International Women’s Day event: Feeding Australia’s Future. The photograph above showcases one of Anna’s other key interests in the past year – introducing more regenerative practices into her home veggie garden. Anna’s responses to our questions are set out below.
1. As someone who worked in food production during 2020, did you observe changes in purchasing habits during the pandemic?
Yes, most definitely. We can all remember back to the panic buying frenzy in supermarkets in March last year and then again each time a state or city went down into lockdown. We have even seen it again with Queensland’s latest lockdown. Who would have thought that toilet paper would turn into a hard currency?
Over the last year consumers have been eating out less, which has led to an increase in meals at home. An interesting habit change example has been: with more people working from home, the week-day breakfast has transitioned for some consumers from being a quick on-the-go meal or being missed, to having more time for breakfast including a cooked breakfast, normally only done on weekends. Also, if you were like me you jumped onto the sourdough bread baking trend in the last year.
We also saw increases in home food delivery services, with Menulog increasing 104% last year[1]. Ready to eat meals are continuing their strong growth at an expected 5.9% CAGR (compound annual growth rate)[2]. Online shopping has averaged an annual rise of 65.5% from March 2020 to January 2021, with food increasing 76% annually in January to $908 billion,[3] including Aldi just announcing it is launching shortly into online shopping for specials and alcohol. It is interesting also that as restrictions have been easing, these trends have generally continued to hold.
In discussions on food trends for this year, those that I am hearing about most consistently are the continuation of plant-based/alternative proteins, low/no sugar, low/no alcohol, socially-responsive measures such as self-sustaining/regenerative farming practices and upcycled products that reduce food waste, nootropics (cognitive enhances) and adaptogens which aim to reduce stress.
2. How did you adapt, both with respect to supply chain management and to ensure production could continue in Kinrise’s facilities? Were there any surprising lessons to come out of the experience?
Firstly, and most importantly, was a focus on the safety of our team members. In line with Government requirements we implemented a COVID policy and procedures that included a number of measures such as additional cleaning, restricted visitors to sites, temperature testing, and minimising interactions across shifts, etc.
Secondly, was to respond to demand surges, which included significant increases in some categories and decreases in others. Kinrise has a great team with everyone being flexible – there was great collaboration across the business with the sales team working closely with customers, and production and warehousing teams adapting to the new ways of working along with moving several lines to 7 days production. We looked at ways to simplify the supply chain including focusing some production lines to a core range of products.
Thirdly we needed to work closely, not just with our customers, but also with our suppliers to understand what impacts they were facing and to collaboratively respond. To take an example, in the last year on-demand streaming services in Australia grew to 17.7m subscriptions, up 16% from a year prior[4]. What goes hand in hand with watching movies at home? Microwave popcorn. Microwave popcorn has been in strong growth along with the on-demand streaming services. When you start to think from a supply chain perspective on what is needed to ensure continuity of supply for microwave popcorn it might on the surface seem quite simple, but it actually starts to get pretty complicated as you get into the detail- securing the right specification of popcorn which is a seasonal crop, securing specialty ingredients and specialty packaging locally and from overseas, in the midst of not just COVID19 challenges, but also global increases on microwave popcorn.
The biggest area of learning I have had in the last year is supply chain resiliency. It is a term that has been around since 2004, but has definitely come to the forefront of topics in supply chain in the last 12 months. Supply chain resilience involves both building into your supply chain measures to avoid/minimise the impact of issues, and being responsive to sense when issues are occurring and adaptively respond.
3. What lessons from the pandemic do you plan to take into the future (post-pandemic world)?
As mentioned above one key lesson is supply chain resiliency. In addition to the pandemic, in the last year there have been multiple factors impacting supply chains in Australia, including the worst bushfires on record, floods, trade wars, industrial action at our ports, Suez Canal blockage, and cyber-attacks, to name a few. As our supply chains have become more globalised, we need to consider not only how we build resiliency into our supply chains including using Industry 4.0 solutions, but also ensure we can make our supply chains sustainable.
On sustainability, an area that sparked my interest from discussions with the other panellists from DCC’s International Women’s Day event last year was regenerative agriculture. I’ve always been into growing my own produce, having grown up on a farm and also being married to an agronomist. This last year I took on learning more about regenerative practices and decided the best way to learn was to deploy it into my home backyard veggie patch. The benefits of regenerative gardening/farming are numerous, with top being climate change benefits on the sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere into the soil, and productive and pesticide free growing.
What it has meant is that I no longer turn over/till my soil in my raised garden beds, rather I harness the relationship between the roots of plants and microorganisms. When a crop is harvested the previous crops roots are left in the ground, weeds (if present) are destroyed by solarisation using plastic sheeting, each new crop is planted with a generous layer of home-made compost and mulch, and I use legume cover crops to rebuild nitrogen levels. So far, 6 months in, the results have been outstanding. The time spent in the garden has been similar to before, our clay based soil is looking much richer and full of worms, there has been no use of chemicals and an abundance of produce in particular over summer.
4. Recently, you decided to move on from your role at Kinrise. How has it been to investigate new opportunities in the post-pandemic environment?
I will be joining Amazon, in their Fulfilment Centre operations, which I am really excited about. Amazon have been undergoing amazing growth both globally and also here in Australia, through their strong customer-centric innovation and employee engagement focus.
[1] https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/butter-chicken-tops-the-list-in-tasty-lockdown-boost-for-menulog/news-story/e315cfc18fdfdb1f508e1b5c99f0a0d8
[2] https://www.jll.com.au/en/trends-and-insights/research/the-rise-of-the-ready-made-meal-market-and-cold-storage-in-australia
[3] https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/online-sales-january-2021-supplementary-covid-19-analysis
[4] https://www.telsyte.com.au/announcements/2020/08/17/subscription-home-entertainment-soars-in-australia#:~:text=Australians%20added%205.6%20million%20new,and%20games%20related%20subscription%20services