Materne Squeezes Out Savings and Strengthens Their Supplier Network by Running an RFP on Cartons with Arkestro
$1 million
in savings
2
additional key suppliers added to supplier network
“The RFP we ran with Arkestro was a double success. We were able to both obtain $1 million in savings and expand our supplier base. It was an amazing achievement!”
Mathieu Pappalardo
Vice President, Procurement, GoGo squeeZ | Materne North America
The Challenge
Ensuring business continuity with rapid growth
Up until the supply chain crisis a few years ago, Materne’s main focus was on the bottom line – savings, as the existing suppliers’ network was enough to support the business. When the pandemic occurred, the focus expanded to business continuity to keep their operations running. Since the company is growing by the double digits every year, there were some concerns that Materne needed more suppliers to protect the business.
Squeezing savings out of suppliers
Mathieu and his team were not only able to meet their objectives, but exceed them with Arkestro. They added two more key suppliers for a total of five – giving them the peace of mind that they would have a backup on every single format (which they didn’t have before). To top it off, they obtained a savings of $1 million!
Overview
Materne North America, also known as GoGo SqueeZ, is the leader of “Applesauce in a Pouch,” with over 65% in market share. They belong to the world-renowned company the BEL Group, also an Arkestro customer.
The company has a cartons baseline spend of $20 million a year, coming in a variety of sizes. With over 100,000 tons of apples purchased each year and 200 growers that they work with, it is no surprise they have a lot of products to package.
With a three-year agreement coming to a close with three incumbent suppliers, Materne turned to Arkestro to run an RFP on cartons.
Approach
Prior to the first sourcing event with Arkestro, Mathieu had his team reach out to their three incumbent suppliers regarding renegotiating their contract. Materne was transparent that they were inviting new suppliers, but offered them a chance to come back with a new price proposal before running an RFP. If Mathieu and his team liked the prices that were sent over, then they would extend their current agreements.
Unfortunately they did not like the prices that the incumbent suppliers sent over, which is when the team turned to Arkestro to run a sourcing event. Initially Mathieu and his team were skeptical of being able to find new suppliers quickly, but they were pleasantly surprised by what they achieved.
Result
Arkestro helped Materne to strengthen their supplier network, with the added bonus of achieving amazing savings. With the company planning to grow by double digits every year, this means more projects for Mathieu and his team. They are looking forward to utilizing Arkestro to become more strategic and not spend days dumping data into Excel to analyze, but to instead spend that time focusing on the future of the business.
“I have a great team and we have a lot of fun working together. They have been very resilient in the recent challenging years.”
Conclusion
Materne’s procurement team’s future focus is to continue building a strong supplier network. Not only will they need double the cartons, but apples, food puree, and more!
“I want to make sure I continue giving my team the resources that they need, which is people, specific equipment, and tools. And of course Arkestro is one of the tools.”