Alternate Titles
MouCo increases sales and profit potential with expansion of return shipping materials program.
MouCo decreases shipping materials 90% with expansion of return program.
(Fort Collins, CO, USA) MouCo Cheese Company is a cheese manufacturer located in the northern front range of Colorado. Four out of the last five years MouCo has been awarded one of the top three soft ripened cheeses made in the USA in national cheese competitions. This has garnered much attention from chefs, restaurants and resorts throughout the country. While their cheeses may be award winning they are also making waves in the world of environmentally friendly food producers.
In April of 2010 MouCo Cheese Company continued implementation of their SWEC program; SWEC is their acronym for “Shipping with Earth Concerns”. They are now using this system for small sample orders as well as internet sales.
“This continues shipping reduction efforts that were started with their wholesale customers in 2002 that have resulted in an annual reduction of 90% of their total shipping material use.” said Birgit Halbreiter, President of MouCo Cheese.
Halbreiter continued, “While much of our cheese is picked up by food distributors with refrigerated trucks, 20% of their business is done via the common courier, FedEx. We specialize in soft ripened cheese which must be refrigerated during transportation. This forces us to use cardboard enclosed insulated shipping containers and refrigeration gel to maintain the refrigeration requirements.”
Environmental concerns were the main reason that they started the program but much has changed in the programs impact for the company. Over the last 8 years the SWEC program has been continually improved using modern technology such as shipment temperature monitoring devices and enlisting the help of FedEx integration experts to make shipment processing more efficient. These improvements have MouCo actually saving money and space and even selling more cheese over the traditional one way shipping program they use to use.
“Because the box is a better design that what we would use if it was not coming back, we are able to slow down the shipping rate, thus saving the customer as much as 70% of their shipping expenses” said Robert Poland, Vice President of the company, “Plus, it makes for better sleep at night knowing we are not throwing out all of that material”. Poland also cited having several customers decide to increase their orders from day to day due to their “Green” shipping program.
2010 has been a good year for MouCo Cheese Company in term of monetary gains due to their continual improvement in the area of environmentally efficiency. In January a project was completed in their production department that resulted in a 20% reduction in their total water usage as well as15% of their natural gas bill.
Even while being so serious on efficiency they have time to play, “Charlie, the Box” is a presentation they are writing for their website, www.mouco.com, that talks about the adventures of a box that did over 100,000 miles of travelling before it was retired to show other companies how to follow their lead.
“Good Luck MouCo and Charlie.”!
A text version of this press release is available at: http://www.mouco.com/MouCo_Press_Room/
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