Customer demand No. 1: freshness

Day after day, METRO Cash & Carry faces the challenge of efficiently handling thousands of orders, shipments and deliveries to ensure that the desired goods arrive at the right place at the right time. For this reason, the company has introduced a high-performance logistics system with the capacity to supply its customers with food products in consistently high quality, diversity and freshness on a daily basis. Binding quality standards prevent anything but immaculate quality from entering the sales area.

Supply chain management

With IT-supported and integrated supply chains, METRO Cash & Carry ensures efficient supply chain management. It puts the wholesale stores in a position to supply fresh fish of the highest quality to customers in the restaurant business on a daily basis, to name just one example. The company avoids stocking large amounts of seafood at stores; instead, the buyers responsible send their orders to the distribution center every morning – the goods arrive at the store before it opens its doors to customers.

100 tons of fish a day

Day after day, around 100 metric tons of fresh fish are transported throughout the whole of Germany. While this is happening, so is continuous quality control: packages that arrive from the far corners of the earth undergo thorough inspection before being shipped on. The METRO employees in charge of such inspections check the consistency, appearance, smell and temperature of the products.

Following transport in refrigerated containers, another check takes place at the wholesale market’s incoming goods area. Only after this inspection is passed will the goods be offered for sale, displayed on crushed ice. When the doors of the store open for the day, customers can choose from a selection of fresh, top-quality fish.

Cold-Chain Management

Although 130 years have passed since the invention of the refrigerator, the continuous cooling of fruit, vegetables, fish or poultry in the grocery trade is not a foregone conclusion. In tropical countries, such as in southern Asia, groceries frequently spoil as a result of inefficient cold chains.

State-of-the-art technology

METRO Cash & Carry uses the very latest technology and develops complex logistics systems to meet customer demands irrespective of season or weather conditions. Shipping goods that are heat-sensitive is a huge challenge. Quality and freshness can only be guaranteed if the goods are constantly refrigerated from the time they leave the producer to the time they reach the customer. At METRO Cash & Carry, the warehousing and transport of frozen foods takes place at a constant minus 18 degrees, and at 2 degrees Celsius for fresh produce. Temperature monitoring is done manually or by computer, in the truck as well as in storerooms and freezers.

The data is processed centrally – and the METRO employees in charge can respond immediately to temperature fluctuations. If the refrigeration in a truck bed should fail, the truck will be sent immediately to the nearest cold storage so as not to disrupt the cold chain.