BrewDog

Ross Watson is Global Head of Supply Chain at BrewDog; he gave his thoughts on why EMS is a highly valued partner for the world’s foremost carbon friendly drinks company.

Why EMS?
I worked with EMS during my previous roles and saw first-hand the value they add to a supply chain operation so bringing them into BrewDog was one of the easiest decisions I made, when I started.

Why outsource?
Simply, EMS are experts in what they do. Pallet and equipment management is a complex part of inbound and outbound logistics that very few people are real experts in and if it’s not managed correctly, it can be costly.

Their knowledge and experience is invaluable in helping us achieve our supply chain goals.

We didn’t face many significant issues before we started working with EMS, but we knew that our volumes would significantly grow so we brought them in to help protect us through the growth. Since our partnership started our volume has exploded so it was the right move!

How does it work?
The team at EMS take control of everything from ordering to movement declaration and from invoice reconciliation to query management. They have maintained control over the exponentially increasing volumes with no exposure incurred thanks to their approach of micromanaging each element of the account.

Whilst we have open lines of communication we speak on an infrequent basis because they are always completely on top of the account. When we do speak, for review meetings or if there’s a problem or observation that I need to be made aware of, a plan has usually already been established to solve the issue.

This helps save valuable time looking for a solution in a situation we don’t fully understand. These solutions are generated from EMS’s extensive knowledge of how pooling works and their strong relationships with the suppliers.

Do EMS help you achieve your goals?
Very importantly for BrewDog, they maintain control of our assets which means we don’t have to replace them, which in turn means less resources used and ultimately reduced carbon wastage.

Crucially the pallet spend is always achieved or under budget.

Final thoughts…
I’d highly recommend speaking to EMS to understand how they could help you. It may open your eyes to the possibilities that you didn’t realise were available.