With so much focus in the trade and general media on the difficulties of the current economic environment, sometimes the progress that has been made, and the opportunities realised, can be overlooked.

I’d like to take a moment here to share some of the progress we’ve made at CHEP Australia so far this year. We have:

• Commenced the design and discovery phase of a New Generation RPC (Returnable Produce Crate) that can save future users up to 25 per cent of their current reverse logistics costs;

• Achieved external certification of the CHEP-owned systems and technology that can meet our customers’ key technical requirements for pallets used in ASRS systems;

• Enabled more than 200 customers to realise the transport, hygiene and handling benefits of upgrading to our all plastic Intercon IBC (Intermediate Bulk Container);

• Lifted productivity by 5.7% and implemented more than $5.9 million of efficiency savings to help deal with significant cost increases in our core business inputs (timber, transport, electricity);

• Innovated, together with our retail and manufacturing customers, to introduce fractional display pallets to new product supply chains for significant in-store benefits;

• Automated transport ordering for ease and efficiency (both online and bulk applications), while achieving Delivered In Full On Time (DIFOT) rates above 99 per cent in every month of the year;

• Integrated a small but growing number of our larger customers to EDI to lower the cost and increase the efficiency, accuracy and timeliness of their transactional interaction with CHEP;

• Provided practical assistance through more than 5500 customer visits, improving practices and procedures for effective pallet and asset control.

We’re also continuing the conversation with customers through our ’Forum’ program, building a community who will help us shortly release new pooling knowledge banks, practical pooling tips, and a CHEP active dispute resolution process.

At the same time, as you’ll read in this latest edition of Vantage, our customers are gaining advantages in their businesses through our international network and are delighting their customers as they add new lines to RPCs. Looking beyond the supply chain, your support of CHEP is helping us support leaders of the future who have a head for business and a heart for the community through the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) program.

In this time of great opportunity, as always, we’re committed to delivering and adding value, and we thank you for choosing CHEP.

Phillip Austin President CHEP Australia & New Zealand

CHEP is a Brambles company | 1ISSUE 06

ISSUE 06CHEP’s unique view into supply chain logistics

What’s the greatest opportunity your company has taken so far this year?

WelcomeIn this issueDELIvERING ON ‘PAIN POINT’ PROmISES

QUALITy RESULT DRIvES RETURN TO CRATES

INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION SHORTENS SUPPLy CHAIN

FASTER, SImPLER, mORE ACCURATE EQUIPmENT CONTROL

STUDENTS vIE TO mAkE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE

ISSUE 06CHEP is a Brambles company | 2

Delivering on ‘pain point’ promises Back in August 2011 CHEP invited a random sample of its customers to rate their experiences working with CHEP. In the December 2011 issue of Vantage, CHEP outlined a plan, taking a multi-focused approach, to improve in the areas that you regarded as your highest priority. Now, in June 2012, Senior Director Sales and Services, Dan Reeves, outlines the progress to date.

Please contact customer service on 13 CHEP (13 2437) to register your interest in this new functionality, or visit Chepedia.chep.com to view the training module online.

Two-way communication

We are opening up more lines of communication with you through face to face forums, online discussion rooms and asking for direct feedback as we make changes to specific processes, like invoice reconciliation.

Thank you for your investment of time in our process of continuous improvement. We are committed to two-way communication, and we value your feedback so please, visit our new site, Chepedia.chep.com and let us know what you think.

Thank you for your continued support and for choosing CHEP.

We’ll investigate the situation and report our findings and transactional recommendations to all affected parties.

Query resolution

We’ve introduced programs that focus on resolving your queries about physical equipment issues and returns, and your account payment queries, more quickly. most importantly we are getting to the root of the problem so it won’t happen again. We’re really tightening up processes to speed up query resolution and we have reduced the time we take to process an account query by 44 per cent.

CHEP invoice reconciliation

We’re in the process of rolling out Portfolio+Plus Reconciliation functionality which means that Porfolio customers can reconcile invoices at the press of a button.

It has been almost a year since the survey and six months since you last heard from me on this program; in that time we have worked on a number of initiatives that touched most of the issues you raised through the survey. I’d like to present progress to date from those initiatives:

Online access to more information

In may we launched a new online tool to provide information to help optimise your use of CHEP’s systems and equipment. With a working title of Chepedia.chep.com it is your CHEP encyclopaedia, and aims to help you navigate through the world of pooled equipment. It outlines step by step processes for working with CHEP including:

• Best practice equipment control

• Invoice management

• Working with trading partners

• managing disputes

We hope Chepedia will help you to identify opportunities to improve efficiencies relating to the management and control of your returnable assets and ultimately help to extract related costs from your supply chain.

We will continue to develop the site and add features and functionality based on your feedback, so please let us know what you think.

More contact

knowing our customers’ business is a big part of our business, so we’ve restructured our sales and services business and made this a focus. We have more field service people on the ground and we’ve also introduced a customer service satisfaction rating for all of our team members doing site visits. We want to find ways to continuously improve your experiences with us. By responding to your specific feedback we aim to provide value from each visit.

We also recently launched a program which focuses on imbedding best practice across our business in the areas of customer relationship management and customer support.

Dispute Management

We received strong feedback in our last survey and from customer forums asking CHEP to help bring transparency and discipline to the management of transactional disputes. As a result, we have been working with customers through our recent forums to develop a framework under which trading partner disputes can be resolved. We’re looking at using the existing process to receive ‘official dispute registrations’ through the investigations team.

CHEP Australia Strategic Marketing Director, Renee Holbrook, leads discussion at the May Forum

CHEP is a Brambles company | 3ISSUE 06

Quality result drives return to crates

The grower selects the variety, plants, and then nurtures fruit trees for years before they yield a commercial crop. They are both his livelihood and his passion. The last thing the grower wants is to see his fruit damaged or the quality compromised as it travels through the supply chain.

“The crates look after the product better. They travel better, get better airflow through the product which maintains the cool chain better and therefore the product quality is better. ” Chris Deveney, Favco

Another thing about growers - they are a pragmatic bunch. So when citrus grower and market agent Chris Deveney from Favco says that his first choice for shipping oranges and mandarins through the supply chain is a CHEP crate, you know there’s going to be a practical reason why.

“The crates look after the product better,” mr Deveney says. “They travel better, get better airflow through the product which maintains the cool chain better and therefore the product quality is better.”

“Also there’s no sag. If cardboard gets wet for any reason you get compression in the fruit. As cartons are put on trucks they tend to compress together. you don’t get that with crates. The crates transport beautifully through the supply chain and they don’t damage fruit.”

Favco is numbered among the growers that are going back to using CHEP crates for oranges after a brief sojourn into cardboard cartons. As soon as it was known that oranges would again be accepted in crates, Favco switched back.

“We never stopped using them for mandarins,” mr Deveney said.

mandarins are less robust than oranges, and require a tightly controlled cool chain to maintain quality. However even the robust navel copped a beating in cardboard compared to crates, with damage rates increasing by 50 per cent on large fruit.

“We were one of the first farms using crates when they were introduced in 2000, particularly for mandarins,” mr Deveney says.

“They improved our overall performance, with interstate arrivals turning up and we’ve been a fan of them ever since.”

Favco has farms in mundubbera and mareeba in North Queensland and also sources citrus fruit from no less than 150 growers across Australia including citrus from the Riverina (NSW), Riverland (SA) and the mildura region (vic).

“We were one of the first farms using crates when they were introduced in 2000...... They improved our overall performance...... and we've been a fan of them ever since. ” Chris Deveney, Favco

In addition to crates, Favco also uses CHEP bins for picking and CHEP pallets when transporting loads.

Who would you say cares most about the quality of fruit entering the market? The packer? The wholesaler? The retailer? Of course they all care; but it’s the grower who has put his blood, sweat and tears into creating that piece of fruit.

Harvest time in Mundubbera

If you’d like to find out more about how crates could benefit your business, please contact Brett Qualtrough on 0404 460 479.

CHEP is a Brambles company | 4ISSUE 06

moving from a closed loop system, using their own drums and tanks, to working with CHEP was a big step for ink manufacturer Flint Group according to Flint Group Sales Director - Print media ANZ, Paul Lamberti, but the move assisted in securing the business of a major customer and has shortened the supply chain from the Netherlands to Australia by up to two weeks.

Back in Australia, Denise Taylor had to come up with a clever solution to bridge the eight-week gap in the supply chain before the Unicons arrived from Europe.

Flint Netherlands ships around 250 tonnes a month of its flagship product, Premoking 4000, in CHEP Unicons to Flint Australia’s customer.

“Filling CHEP boxes from our drums at the Sydney facility was a simple solution until the supply from the Netherlands caught up – and it was seamless,” Denise says.

In fact, says Paul Lamberti, it is working so well that Flint Group is considering replicating the model in the US.

“This is the first time we’ve worked with CHEP boxes,” mr Lamberti says. “The benefit is that we got rid of double-handling; the boxes are filled at our factory in Europe and go straight to our customer in Australia. From an operational perspective it has shortened the length of the supply chain by a week or two.”

CHEP’s behind-the-scenes cooperation across the global network was key in bringing the international deal together.

Flint Netherlands ships around 250 tonnes a month of its flagship product, Premoking 4000, in CHEP Unicons to Flint Australia’s customer. Once emptied the boxes are returned to CHEP Lidcombe Service Centre for cleaning and then relocated back directly into Flint Netherlands, reducing handling and transport. CHEP also supplies Flint with specially designed ink liners.

Flint Group’s Denise Taylor was on the frontline, working with CHEP to make it all happen.

“We had an opportunity to supply a particular customer and the time frame was very short,” ms Taylor says. “They had a delivery system in place, so it was a case of finding the right contact at CHEP and pulling it together, which we did with no hassle at all.”

CHEP Australia Senior Business Relationship manager for Containers, Peter Gaddes, says CHEP’s flexibility and behind-the-scenes cooperation across the global network was key in bringing the international deal together.

“The support of the international teams was critical to the success of this deal,” mr Gaddes says. “Our teams across Australia, Europe and the US moved very quickly to tackle the logistical challenge.

“One of the key obstacles to securing the business was that neither Australia nor Europe had enough Unicon stock to handle the volumes necessary, and the CHEP US team stepped up to provide the necessary equipment in a very short time frame. It really demonstrates the strength of having a large, flexible network.”

International collaboration shortens supply chain

If you would like to find out more about CHEP containers, please contact Senior Business Relationship Manager, Peter Gaddes on: peter.gaddes@chep.com

CHEP is a Brambles company | 5ISSUE 06

Faster, simpler, more accurate equipment controlIn an ‘ideal world’ equipment control processes are simple, fast and 100 per cent accurate. CHEP and several willing customers have recently taken a significant step toward this ‘ideal world’ scenario through the use of an electronic data interchange (EDI) system.

What is EDI?

EDI is the structured transmission of data between organisations by electronic means without human intervention. It enables technology to keep up with the speed and accuracy at which businesses requires information to be exchanged and updated.

Why choose EDI?

The EDI technology not only reduces the double handling of data by removing the human touch points, but also helps maintain consistency throughout the transaction cycle. The aim is to capture or enter the information once and relay it to multiple partners and/or systems.

“It is a seamless process that can operate in real time. This improves productivity around asset management activities and reduces double-handling of data.” Anirban Gupta, CHEP Australia IT Regional Director

In an EDI environment, customers use their own equipment tracking system to record equipment movements and the information is automatically deployed to a file exchange server where it is picked up by CHEP’s computer system for processing.

Because data only has to be entered once into the customer’s own system using their own account and equipment codes, they save time on data entry and minimise the risk of error.

While EDI technology has been around for a while, CHEP’s recent move to EDIFACT, the GS1 industry standard, makes the use of EDI a more attractive option especially for customers with mature EDI environments.

CHEP Australia IT Regional Director, Anirban Gupta says, “EDIFACT integration eliminates the need for a CHEP customer to leave their respective system for updating transactions relating to CHEP products.

The reliance on email functionality is replaced by an exchange server, which is particularly robust for large volumes of data. It is a seamless process that can operate in real time.

This improves productivity around asset management activities and reduces double-handling of data.”

CUSTOMER

ORDER ORDERACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ADVANCED

SHIPPING

NOTIFICATIONPROOF OF DELIVERY

TRANSFERS/

CORRECTIONS

CHEP Information Exchange

CHEP Information Exchange

Firewall

Value Added Network

For more information on CHEP's EDI system, and how your company can take advantage of this technology, please contact your CHEP account manager.

CHEP is a Brambles company | 6ISSUE 06

Students vie to make the world a better placeHow do you decide who has done the most good? This will be the challenge facing CHEP Australia & New Zealand President, Phillip Austin, when he and a panel of business leaders judge the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) Australia awards next month.

SIFE is a not-for-profit organisation which operates in 40 countries globally, bringing together the skills and experience of two generations of leaders: those who are currently leading major organisations and student leaders, to make the world a better place through the positive power of business.

The judges will consider which SIFE team most effectively empowered people in need by applying business and economic concepts, and an entrepreneurial approach, to improve their quality of life and standard of living.

“Supporting the young leaders of the future in embracing responsibility for social disadvantage and using their skills and talents to make a difference is a great privilege for CHEP.” Phillip Austin, CHEP Australia & New Zealand President

Founding director and SIFE CEO Judy Howard says “Some of the projects this year focus on helping homeless people to learn skills to run a business, helping businesses reduce their environmental footprint, and empowering children to make healthy lifestyle choices.”

mr Austin, who is a SIFE board member and mentor says he decided to become involved with the organisation after hearing about it from a CHEP customer.

“I was aware of SIFE through a connection with Tim Hart, the CEO of Sugar Australia. We started talking about its goals and needs, and it seemed a good fit for CHEP and SIFE,” mr Austin says.

“Supporting the young leaders of the future in embracing responsibility for social disadvantage and using their skills and talents to make a difference is a great privilege for CHEP.

“It’s important to me because I just fundamentally believe in “doing the right thing”, not talking about it, but doing something about it. Beyond that, there is strong alignment as the principles the students and SIFE are applying are those we use inside our own company: taking responsibility, acting fairly, creating opportunity, delivering value, connecting people and providing choice.”

An initiative that mr Austin is spearheading for SIFE is the introduction of scorecard for partners and student teams.

“Again, this is really no different to one of the core issues we face in our own business,” mr Austin says. “It’s one thing to provide a great product or service, but unless the customer can clearly see, know and feel the value of what you are doing for them, you don’t have a connection that will endure and grow together.”

“Businesses have a wide range of choices of organisations that they can support, all of whom are doing good things in their area of focus. It’s key that SIFE can show organisations that support them the full value of being involved.”

Through carrying out projects that help the community, students develop leadership,

teamwork, and communication skills including project management, problem solving and networking skills.

ms Howard believes having partners that include Woolworths, QANTAS, kmPG, Fonterra and Coca Cola Amatil is of great value to SIFE Australia students who come from 27 universities around the country.

“The students get to network with a blue chip organisations and a senior team from that organisation. They’re going to get absolutely first class guidance and mentoring.”

The 2012 SIFE National Conference and Championships event will be held at the Grand Hyatt melbourne on 12 and 13 July.

One of the SIFE 2012 projects - helping school students cultivate healthy eating habits