Seamless control of the global supply chain of our raw materials from cultivation, through on-site processing at origin and transport to Europe.
Our suppliers
are our partners.
As early as the 1950s, Bösch Boden Spies transformed itself from a traditional trader and broker of raw materials from various producers into an import agency that exclusively represents its quality producers from overseas in Europe. Therefore, we have maintained a close partnership with our suppliers, often for many decades, characterized by trust. The majority of these suppliers are cooperatives, i.e. the association of several farmers to form a joint supplier or family businesses that maintain close personal relationships with their farmers. For our customers, this division of responsibilities has the advantage that they usually buy from the world’s leading producers, who at the same time set the quality standards in their areas, but do not have to personally take care of every detail of handling and control, because Bösch Boden Spies does this bundled for all 1000+ customers.
Every year, we move more than 110,000 tons of fruits and nuts to Europe as raw materials for final food production. The majority of this, over 70%, comes from North America, with another 13% from South America (Chile, Colombia, Peru). The remaining volume comes from Europe (Poland, Spain, Greece) South Africa, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.
The planned supply chain law puts even more focus on the responsibility of industry and trade. For our quality-oriented European customers in the processing food industry as well as the trade, the complete control of the global supply chain of our raw materials from cultivation, through further processing on site in the origin and transport to Europe has already been a central issue. Our special role as a B2B supplier and partner is to create maximum transparency along this supply chain. Advising our partners on compliance with the legal minimum standards, as well as analyzing the feasibility of often higher standards of our customers and the joint work on continuous improvements together with our partners is the focus of the measures. This monitoring process includes social as well as climate and environmental standards.
Efficient supplier management
We currently represent almost 40 raw material suppliers. The prerequisite is a GFSI certificate. In addition, some of our suppliers are already pursuing their own sustainability strategies, in which they set themselves specific targets in conjunction with comprehensive packages of measures.
The performance of each supplier is permanently monitored. This includes regular on-site audits, in which our customers also participate upon request. Every customer complaint is recorded by us, the cause and countermeasures are clarified by our quality management in direct dialog with the supplier and made transparent to the customer. All performance data is included in an annual scoring, the results of which we discuss with our suppliers in order to initiate further improvements. Likewise, every potential new supplier undergoes comprehensive screening according to clearly defined minimum standards before we include it in our supplier portfolio.
Development of a global code of conduct
In addition to compliance with quality standards, we are increasingly taking into account compliance with corresponding ethical guidelines in our supplier management, such as compliance with occupational safety, respect for human rights, the documented exclusion of child labor, the guarantee of freedom from discrimination, freedom of assembly and organization, fair payment and the offer of health benefits as well as opportunities for training and further education based on the standards of the International Labor Organization (ILO) as provided for in the planned European Supply Chain Act. We have summarized the variously grown requirements in a supplier code, which will become the binding basis for the cooperation with Bösch Boden Spies in the future.
In the future, we will summarize the various requirements in a supplier code, which will become the binding basis for the cooperation with Bösch Boden Spies.
Comprehensive quality management
For more than 10 years BBS has established an independent quality department, in which the needs of the customers are processed with regard to the quality assurance of the goods and the quality management of our products. We are a highly motivated team of 9, consisting of a good mixture of young graduates but also experienced employees who have been involved in the development of the department for more than 10 years. The range of tasks could not be more diverse and includes activities such as specification coordination, processing of customer-specific documents and the coordination of quality requirements, complaint management, but also the auditing of our suppliers and service providers. In doing so, we always act in close coordination with our internal departments but also with our customers and suppliers.
Furthermore, we ensure the maintenance of our own internal quality standards within the framework of the IFS Broker certification and critically question where there is potential for improvement. A strategically structured supplier management with constant monitoring and evaluation of our partners is a matter of course for us in order to meet our own quality requirements. For several years, we have had products packaged under our name for the retail trade. In cooperation with our customers, a dedicated team takes care of the packaging design in compliance with food regulations and the secured introduction into the market.
Recently, the QM department has been expanded to include Sustainability. As a company, we are committed to fulfilling our responsibility towards society and on a global level, and to making our contribution to a planet worth living on, also for future generations. We have therefore set ourselves the goal of strategically integrating sustainability into our actions. In order to be able to fully implement this, Ms. Dorota Kollien, who has established the Quality Management department over the past years and leads it in disciplinary terms, completed the Sustainability Manager at the ZNU (Center for Sustainable Corporate Development) in 2018. Step by step, we now want to implement more and more topics at the corporate level as well as along the value chain and act in an increasingly sustainable manner. We set ourselves measures and targets for ecological, economic and social aspects and would like to update this process continuously with the aim of constantly improving ourselves at sustainability level and becoming more sustainable. As a first step in the right direction, we joined a ranking by EcoVadis for the first time this year and to our delight we were directly awarded a silver medal. According to the ranking, we belong to the top 25% of the companies evaluated by EcoVadis in the wholesale of food, beverages and tobacco industry.
In the quality management we pursue the goal to be available for our customers, suppliers but also internal departments in an advisory capacity in order to keep an eye on all conceivable risks and thereby ensure that we can fulfill the expectations placed on us. To this end, we regularly undergo further training in order to be able to pass on all new key topics to the company as well as to customers and suppliers in good time and in full.
