Florida Bulk Sales is proud of the role we play as an ingredient supplier to food and beverage manufactures and crucial link in the global food chain, and we understand the importance during the current COVID-19 crisis of maintaining the health and well-being of our employees while continuing to operate at efficient and safe capacities. To that end, we are fortunate to be able to rely on existing business systems and processes designed to mitigate supply chain interruption and effectively control food safety risks. Beyond those existing practices, we are also taking broad measures to adapt and respond to the swiftly changing environment to preserve a safe and consistent food supply:
- Florida Bulk employs a multi-supplier, multi-origin strategy for raw material procurement to maintain and protect continuous supply.
- Florida Bulk and its affiliates have endeavored to increase our inventory of raw material and finished product in advance of the current situation, and plan to continue those efforts over the next several weeks to ensure we are able to meet customer needs to the fullest extent possible under the circumstances.
- We have implemented technological and related infrastructure changes needed to shift employees who are not essential to onsite operations to remote work and completed a smooth transition of all such staff to work from home status.
Chicago Processed Fruit Group, LLC (or “CPFG”) – As Florida Bulk’s manufacturing affiliate and sister-company, CPFG continues to uphold its industry-leading standards for sanitation and facility maintenance under the FSSC 22000 GFSI scheme. In addition to those existing practices, CPFG has implemented the following measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic:
- All employees that are able to work from home are required to do so until further notice, not only for their own safety, but to limit unnecessary risk of exposure to the virus for those employees with roles that can only be performed onsite.
- Employees that must work onsite for operations to continue (e.g., production machine operators, order fulfilment and warehouse employees, etc.) have been instructed as to recommended hygiene protocols, minimizing physical contact with co-workers, and appropriate use personal protective equipment.
- Additional cleaning and disinfection procedures have been implemented to further mitigate any risk to both personnel and product.
- We quickly implemented an additional production shift to reduce the number of employees per shift and create separation between essential staff members.
- We revised our Shipping & Receiving workflow to further limit close contact between our employees and carriers and other outside parties.
- Instituted a temporary ban on all non-essential visitors entering the facility.
We continue to closely monitor the health and safety of our staff, news and scientific developments regarding the transmission and spread of the virus, and any measures taken by governmental authorities and our industry partners that could impact our business or those of our customers and suppliers. Through these efforts, among others, Florida Bulk and CPFG are doing everything within our power to ensure that our businesses can continue to operate at full volume, as well as prepare for additional challenges that arise.
