HULAMIN CONTAINERS
Almost eight years on, and CFS has already begun to follow in the footsteps of its parent company.
Starting small and scaling rapidly in the Western Cape, the division initially focused on marketing predominently dry groceries and perishable products before expanding to become the first true broadline food service distributor in South Africa.
“By the start of 2015 our range had expanded to include fresh fruit and vegetables, a fresh butchery, cutlery, crockery, equipment, packaging and consumables, wine and liquor,” van der Spuy, the GM, explains. “From this base, our distribution footprint expanded into the greater Gauteng region at the start of 2016, covering South Africa’s largest market.”
A fresh approach
CFS is still a relatively young company in the grand scheme of things, but this is not to say that it isn’t a formidable player in South Africa’s food service market.
A rapid, sustained rise has seen it become renowned as no less than South Africa’s preferred hospitality and catering supplier, a status that van der Spuy himself is particularly proud of.
“None of our competitors locally can compete with the competitive offering we have,” he says. “Besides our low price leadership, owed to the backing that we have from Africa’s largest retailer, we are also able to offer our customers access to our retail stores through a linked business card that allows for emergency top up purchases at any of our 2,700 retail outlets at a discounted price. This, paired with our quick order turnarounds (on average between three and 24 hours), means that our customers enjoy not only the best prices, but the widest access to the products they need.”
While Shoprite’s support is a key tool that CFS leverages to differentiate itself, so too is technology, the business already established as a food services industry disruptor.
AFRICA’S GROWING APPETITE FOR CONVENIENCE
Time-starved lifestyles are making convenience a key driver in the growth of the ready prepared meals market. In South Africa for example, a third (34 percent) of consumers in 2018 used restaurant delivery or meal kit services, up from 29 percent in 2017 and 19 percent in 2016. Equally, environmental consciousness is on the rise and manufacturers and retailers are under pressure to offer today’s consumer convenience meals that are packed with nutritional punch, and that are not harmful to our planet.
Hulamin aluminium containers are perfect to take advantage of this market opportunity, for many reasons, the two most important being: they retain their structural integrity throughout the entire temperature range (they don’t release any chemicals when heated), and they are kind to the environment. Millions of metric tonnes of plastic finds its way into the ocean annually and it is projected that by
2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than there are fish (by weight). According to Britain’s Royal Statistical Society, only nine percent of the world’s plastic is recycled; in contrast, aluminium is 100 percent recyclable and of all the aluminium ever made, 75 percent of it is still in use today – now that’s sustainability!
With Hulamin Containers your product will be in safe hands as we are FSSC 22,000 accredited with the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFS), which means our containers are manufactured in a socially and environmentally responsible way.