7-Eleven Australia is making a major investment in evolving its supply chain to support the company’s sustainable growth and ongoing focus on fresh food and innovation through a new partnership with Emergent Cold. The new supply chain phase one is now live with ambient food and drinks now delivered by one truck daily. Other categories will gradually migrate to the new supply chain with all categories through until August.

According to 7-Eleven CEO, Angus McKay, the need for a supply chain that can rapidly scale and expand based on network growth and 7-Eleven’s continually evolving offer was a key criteria for this strategic initiative.

 “We’ve been working on this project for three years. The new supply chain ecosystem will help our stores to make sure they have what their customers need when they need it. One delivery per day, instead of once a week for ambient and frozen products, will help our franchisees to better manage inventory control and cash-flow. It also has operational benefits as store team members are not having to manage huge delivery volumes at once, or daily multi temperature single vehicle deliveries,” Mr McKay said.

In what is believed to be an Australian first, the key to delivering on this strategic initiative was the design and build of assets capable of delivering chilled and ambient products in the same delivery on the same truck. At peak, about 70 of these trucks will deliver some 4.5 million product units weekly to 7-Eleven stores. On daily basis this includes 4,000 sandwiches, 6,000 packs of sushi, 8,000 meat pies, 16,000 sausage rolls and 30,000 cartons of milk.

“7-Eleven is growing strongly, and while our supply chain has served us well, it needs to evolve to enable our future growth. With more than 700 stores, we have well and truly outgrown our previous supply chain system, we needed to control our own supply chain. Our new supply chain ecosystem with our strategic partner Emergent Cold will enable us to expand to meet our projected volumes and ambitious store network growth,” McKay said.

“Our new ecosystem will further strengthen the direct relationship we have with many of our suppliers. We’re focused on working to deliver collective sustainable growth for our store owners, our suppliers and our business overall by ensuring our customers can buy the products and services they want, at the time and in the store that suits them, in the quantity they need.”

 “I’m excited about the potential of our new supply chain to meet the needs of our customers, and as a result drive growth in our business,” McKay concluded.