The Source

ASSIST FM colleagues across the country are continuing to work with their supply chain partners to provide the best quality meals on plates for our children and young people.  The work between ASSIST FM members and Scotland Excel is critical to delivering this, and it’s lovely to have an opportunity to celebrate that success.

Over the last 13 years or so Scotland Excel has led the way in public food procurement, pushing its food portfolio to deliver value, quality produce for councils, while also creating wider benefits for Scotland’s economy.  Our food contracts, which include milk, meats, frozen foods, bread and rolls, fruit and vegetables and groceries, are now worth a collective £82m a year.  They help to supply the products served up in schools, nurseries, care homes and community centres across the country. We work closely with suppliers and local councils to ensure our frameworks meet the requirements of all relevant legislation, particularly The Nutritional Requirements for Food and Drink in Schools (Scotland) Regulations 2020 and Setting The Table - Nutritional guidance and food standards for early years childcare providers in Scotland (2018).

Locally sourced produce has become an increasing priority for councils, so we stepped up our role to make sure public sector food contracts are more accessible to Scottish businesses.   This also underpins the Scottish Government’s drive to make sure the power of public spending is used to boost Scotland’s economy.  This became even more important in the past year or so with local supply being vital for our councils to be able to provide food to their most vulnerable residents during lockdown.

We were keen to support the government’s Dairy Action Plan to include more Scottish produce in our groceries contract for yoghurt, butter, cheese, and margarine.  So we included a secondary price list within the tender to allow suppliers to offer Scottish dairy products.  As a result, a range of Scottish dairy products are now available for councils to buy.  By switching their cheese to a Scottish product, local authorities have generated more than £4.2m of business for the Scottish cheese sector through the previous generation of our Groceries Framework (May 16 – Apr 20) £385K and on the current framework to date (May 20 – Apr 21). 

When developing our frozen food framework, we gave suppliers the opportunity to bid to supply food only to create opportunities for smaller companies that didn’t have national delivery logistics in place.  As a result, an Aberdeenshire-based fish supplier secured a place on the contract to supply Scottish haddock which has resulted in a spend of over £3.8m over the lifetime of the framework (Jul 17 – Apr 21).  This approach was so successful that we also followed it for our groceries and provisions framework, leading to the appointment of 5 SME manufacturers to the framework.

To bring more Scottish produce onto our meats framework, while still being in line with procurement regulations, we were able to specifically ask for Scotch Beef and Scotch Lamb by including Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) in our previous Fresh Meats Tender.  This approach will be followed when we retender fresh meats next year. We have recently started engagement with the National Farmers Union Scotland and will also engage with Quality Meats Scotland when developing the next generation of this framework. 

Across the whole food portfolio, spending by councils on Scottish products has continued to rise.  Over the past six years core spend on Scottish Produce has increased from 28% to 37%. Not only is this approach good for Scottish businesses, but it’s helping to create a greener Scotland by reducing our food miles and provides good quality, sustainable meals for our children and young people.

Case study

Mossgiel Organic Farm has been working hard on its mission to reduce its impact on our environment with their vision of a truly sustainable dairy.  Since beginning the supply of Organic milk to EAC they have ordered two more electric vehicles and will soon be supplying all of the sites with zero delivery emissions. 

They are installing a biomass boiler at the farm this week, reducing their processing emissions by 70% too, so as time goes on and thanks to the increased volumes from the East Ayrshire contract – they are able to make sure tomorrows Mossgiel Milk emits less CO2e than yesterdays.

In the schools themselves, they have now completed the install of vending machines to the sites they currently supply in East Ayrshire - so as well as much reduced emissions, they will removed ALL single use plastic from the milk supply contract, saving 1.2 million pieces of SU plastic PER YEAR!  Mainly the 250ml bottles we used to use which means less going to our recycling plant or on a worse case to landfill.

Bryces comment is: “Back on the farms, all the cows supplying Mossgiel Organic Milk are still outside enjoying the extended summer.  The grass is still growing and the weather is being kind with the cows turning that lush green stuff into nutritious, tasty milk.  We’ll soon be inviting the cows back into the barn however as winter is on her way in just a few weeks, where they’ll be enjoying a diet of organic hay and ensiled grass - washed down by some other organic cow feed too.”

Conclusion

British Food Fortnight gives us a wonderful opportunity to celebrate this work, and to acknowledge the hard work that is undertaken by the producers, our caterers, ASSIST FM members and Scotland Excel to do this every day of the year. 

You can read more about how Scotland is leading the way in establishing local supply chains for its public sector on the Public Procurement Hub on the Love British Food website:

https://www.lovebritishfood.co.uk/scotland