Case Study - Helios Ingredients

Helios ingredients are suppliers of Coconut, Hazelnut, Vine Fruit, and Almond food ingredients across the UK and Europe

In a Nutshell

Company Profile

Helios Ingredients are a passionate, family business with a love for natural and wholesome food ingredients which has been passed down from generation to generation since 1895.

In the 1970’s, father and son, working from Sri Lanka and England respectively, supplied much of the UK and European desiccated coconut industry. Following their success, the business naturally progressed to tree nuts and dried fruit.

Helios are a leading supplier of quality raw and natural food ingredients to much loved brands and retailers across the UK and Europe. Specialising in key product categories; coconut, hazelnuts, vine fruit and almond products their ingredients are used in products from innovative dairy free desserts, wholesome cereals, artisan breads and delicious mince pies to classic chocolate treats.

With offices in Sri Lanka and a manufacturing sister company in Turkey, Helios stay close to product origin to ensure high standards of quality and ethical supply for their customers. They are also dedicated to developing relationships and supporting growers and processors to source quality and sustainable ingredients.

Visit Helios at: https://www.heliosingredients.com/

Challenges & Solutions

What Challenges did Helios Face?

Before Helios implemented 3iVerify the had excel and word-based supplier and material approvals in place which had to be emailed to suppliers and then manually chased to progress to approval. This was causing the following challenges to their business:

  • Acquiring supplier compliance information was very time consuming.

  • Suppliers had to be reminded manually by email and there was a lot of back and forth.

  • Tracking the status of information requests was difficult.

  • There was no standard format for material specifications

  • The number of supplier and raw materials meant a large workload.

  • Tracking and managing NCRs on spreadsheets was non collaborative.

  • Document management and control was tracked on spreadsheet.

What Solutions did Primority provide?

Primority worked closely with the Helios team to digitise their supplier and material approval questionnaires so that the process of sending, approving, tracking, and managing supplier information was more organised and complete.

As time progressed, we helped Helios implement Document Management and Control to ensure that their BRCGS management system was easier to manage, review and audit.

The solution now helps Helios focus resources where they are needed more effectively and organise their supplier information, so it is always up to date and everything is easy to find.

What do Helios use 3iVerify for?

Helios use 3iVerify for:

  1. Sending auto reminders to suppliers to upload certificates and reports on expiry.

  2. Removing the need for updating paper document registers for our quality system.

  3. Keeping the supplier NC and CA in one place will enable us to complete trend analyses.

Top Benefits Delivered for Helios

3iVerify has helped Helios in the following ways:

  1. It ensures that we maintain the highest standards of supplier compliance, which in turn helps us comply with our customer’s supply chain information needs.

  2. It saves a lot of time by automating tedious and manual tasks like chasing suppliers for information and certification.

  3. It helps us organise all of our compliance information in an easy-to-use way that makes audits more straight forward and impresses auditors.

  4. Being able to customise the system to get the exact information we want means that we can react quickly to changes in customer or compliance needs.

  5. It makes everyone’s job easier by automating the time consuming, tedious tasks of a technical manager.

GET IN TOUCH

Ready to improve your food safety systems?

Contact us today to find out more on how we can help you or arrange a demonstration of 3iVerify. Our friendly team is always happy to help and will reach out as soon as possible.