Leading fruit and vegetable supplier Vale Fresh has appointed All Clean Ltd to meet the challenge of overhauling the cleaning regime to help meet the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) stringent criteria.

The brief given to All Clean was to manage daily top to bottom cleaning across Vale Fresh’s 80,000 sqft Evesham site in all areas, including shop floor, packing area, warehousing, despatch, office and communal staff areas.

This is the first food sector contract All Clean has obtained, but it has been able to draw on useful experience gained in other demanding environments such as deep cleaning in hospitals.

Craig Ellis, area supervisor said: “The first thing we did was to work with the Vale Fresh team to identify areas for improvement. Then our onsite team of seven people had to be drilled in the BRC colour-coded system to avoid cross contamination. In particular, at this site, we had to be mindful of keeping cleaning in organic and non-organic food areas distinct. Finally, we had to issue maps to everyone so they could complete their cleaning rounds in a systematic fashion.”

To keep on top of the cleaning, daily audits are conducted to review quality which needs to be maintained during the 6am-12 midnight shifts, 350 days a year. Each month, cleaning is high on the agenda. Kevin Browning site operations manager at Vale Fresh said: “This is a very busy place where a number of different divisions converge. We have to be ready for inspection at any time. We took on All Clean as we were having issues with our previous supplier, and the company has helped us maintain our Grade A status.”