
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
50 | UIL BLENDING SOLUTIONS
I believe that we brought an ambitious
attitude to a business that was already
competent at focusing on customer
service and nurturing relationships
both outwardly and internally.
We have overseen a rebranding
exercise, the aim of which was to
give us a clearer identity. We have
improved and extended our quality
accreditations, and we have taught an
attitude towards customer care that
demandsexcellence.
We are very aware that we own and
operate a small business within a huge
marketplace. This, however, gives us
the ability to offer flexibility within
our service offering that shows our
commitment to the customer.
Road trip
Roughly five years ago I was fortunate
to be able to demonstrate this in a
very practical way. One of our flavour
customers had made a mistake in
their ordering patterns, which had left
them with a large planned production
run without a vital ingredient. I won’t
bore you with the whole story, but
due to haulier time constraints, I found
myself hiring a van and driving for
close to 24 hours, reaching a factory
in Hungary, which enabled delivery of
our flavour and eradicated the need
for a potentially expensive period of
downtime for the customer.
Driving through open borders also
made the trip quick and easy for me,
but maybe I shouldn’t go there…
Difficult times
We joined the business at a very
difficult time not only for the business,
but also the world. The financial
crisis was really taking grip, and
the regularity of orders at Universal
Ingredients was certainly slowing
down. With that in mind we knew
that we had to be prepared to try
newthings.
We were approached by a client
who wanted their liquid sports drink
matched for the powder drink market.
Once Lorna had successfully matched
the product, we had a problem. The
cost of us blending the product to then
be sent elsewhere to be packaged was
prohibitive for ourclient.
The decision was made to borrow the
money to invest in a production line
that would enable us to manufacture
the complete product on site. Honestly,
borrowing the money was the easy
part. We had to nurture a culture
that would embrace this fulfilment.
I’m proud to say that as a business
we succeeded and have seen positive
results from this attitude.
Customer focus
At UIL we insist on delivering the best
service that we can. We are a small
team, but we make ourselves available
whether that is physically or on the
end of the phone to our business
partners. As mentioned before, our
ability and willingness to be flexible has
seen us garner business, as this truly is
valued in the marketplace.
Steam plant dedicated
to producing our liquid
savoury flavour range
Flexibility is
the key to our
excellence
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