Euro Pool System, the Alicante company that moves a third of the fresh food sold in Spain

2023-09-24 11:06:51

Get a tomato harvested in Almería be available in less than 24 hours in a supermarket Vigo it is not an easy task. From the moment a laborer cuts it from the plant until it reaches the hands of the consumer, this vegetable must pass through classification warehouses, distribution centers and the logistics platforms of the different chains, transported by trucks, trains and even , boats. A whole mechanism in which each piece must fit precisely, starting with the containers themselves, which must meet the standards and dimensions necessary to make the most of the space and so that the process can be automated as much as possible.

That is the task of firms such as Euro Pool System, one of the main companies in charge of supplying the reusable plastic boxes that are used to transport – and in many cases display – the fruit, vegetables, fish and meat that They are sold in the main supermarket chains. In the case of Spain -where they work with El Corte Inglés, Aldi, Caprabo, Consum and Makro, among others- The company concentrates approximately 35% of the share of mercado, which means that more than a third of all fresh food that reaches large retailers travels in its packaging, according to the company’s director for southern Europe, Bartolomé Saro.

A percentage that translates into about 125 million annual rentals, to which we must add everything the volume sent from the Spanish producing areas to the main supply chains supermarkets European companies, adding more than 300 million rentals in our country, according to the commercial director, Niko Matheve.

“We reach agreements with supermarkets, which are the ones that tell their suppliers that they must rent our boxes. In this way, the products arrive in standardized packaging to their logistics platforms and the task of forming the orders that are sent is expedited. to each store. A process that many already have automated,” says Saro. Once empty, Euro Pool System itself is responsible for recovering and washing the boxes for reuse – either in the warehouses it has distributed throughout the country or on the platforms themselves. of the chains with which it has agreements – in what is a clear example of a circular economy.

Foldable and with code

The models are foldable, which reduces the use of space on the return tripand, in addition, they are marked with a barcode that allows you to know where each box is at all times and also its contents, and which also facilitates the task on supermarket platforms.

The origin of Euro Pool System must be placed in the early 90s, when the agri-food cooperatives of Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, together with the main supermarket chains in the area, decided to create a standard for the distribution of their products that would allow them to optimize logistics processes. The next step was to ensure that shipments arriving from other countries used this same standard and implement it in local chains.

This is how the Spanish subsidiary of the company was born, whose headquarters were established in Alicante in 1998 and is responsible for managing the business for all of southern Europe – which includes Portugal, Italy, Croatia and Greece-, in addition to non-European markets, among which Turkey, South Africa and Morocco stand out. In the latter, a new company will soon be launched, given the boom that the country has acquired in supplying establishments throughout the continent.

The turnover of the Spanish subsidiary reached 195 million euros last year, according to the figures provided by the company itself, with a profit that exceeds seven million euros. In addition to the headquarters, the firm has seven warehouses throughout the national territory – in Barcelona, ​​Bilbao, Madrid, Valencia, Murcia – as well as two others in Portugal. A facility where almost 250 employees work in total.

Continue innovation

In the area of ​​innovation, apart from improvements in the design of the boxes themselves to facilitate, for example, a better view of the product in the store and to reduce the amount of plastic needed for their manufacture, the company has opted decidedly by the so-called recognition technologies. Thus, using artificial vision arcs, they are able to automatically register each box that enters their facilities and follow it throughout its transportation cycle..

Euro Pool System has also taken measures to reduce its carbon footprint and improve its own logistics costs, especially with regard to the empty return of boxes. A phase of its activity that, despite the space savings resulting from the fact that the boxes are completely foldable, generates traffic of more than 40,000 trucks per year.. To reduce it, the firm joined forces with Transfesa and launched a rail service – the CoolRail – that transports fresh products on the way to different European destinations and brings the company’s boxes on the way back. A measure that has contributed to cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by 36%.