Guilherme Pereira, Operations Manager, Unilever Brazil and CHEP's Pedro Moreira at Unilever's distribution warehouse near Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Recent developments include Unilever becoming a foundation customer of CHEP’s in Turkey and extending its contract with CHEP in North America in 2010. Another highlight for CHEP is its role in supporting Unilever’s growth in Brazil.
In the 2011 financial year, CHEP celebrated 10 years serving all three of Unilever Brazil’s divisions — food, hygiene and personal care, and ice cream — and extended the partnership for a further five years.
A key part of the partnership over coming years will be working together to underpin Unilever’s expansion throughout Brazil and encourage more use of pallet pooling by the many local companies that provide packaging, ingredients and materials for Unilever’s products.
CHEP’s operations in Brazil primarily support the cities of Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Sao Paolo, the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, which has a combined metropolitan population of approximately 20 million people.
CHEP Brazil supports 12 Unilever plants and 13 distribution centres in delivering leading brands such as Dove beauty products, Knorr soups and seasonings and Kibon ice cream.
Unilever Brazil Distribution Director, Pedro Pereira says: "Unilever started operations with CHEP about 10 years ago. This period was marked by a very productive relationship between the two companies from superior results achieved in customer service to our clients, productivity, quality and sustainability. The rationalisation and standardisation of processes and equipment were essential to reach this outcome. Recently we renewed our contract with CHEP for an additional five years, which demonstrates our expectation and confidence that we will move forward in this relationship and accomplish even better results.”
Currently experiencing strong economic conditions and investment ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and Rio 2016 Olympics, Brazil is becoming an increasingly important growth engine for Brambles worldwide.
Brazil is home to a fast-growing IFCO reusable plastic crate business, and provides the base from which CHEP is building a larger and stronger pallets business in South America.