Müller Milk & Ingredients aims to maintain 99% service levels with major recruitment drive

Müller Milk & Ingredients (MMI) has launched a significant recruitment push in order to maintain its first class customer service levels in 2022.

The business is looking to fill over 150 vacancies to ensure that it can continue to deliver service levels of over 99% for its private label dairy customers.

There are full time and part time vacancies nationwide, ranging from HGV drivers, driver trainers and driver apprentices, to dairy production and distribution operatives.

New employees will be given the appropriate training, depending on experience, as well as a range of employment benefits.

Jon Jenkins, Chief Executive Officer at Müller Milk & Ingredients said:

“Despite some of the biggest peacetime challenges the UK food supply chain has faced, our business model, which is designed with strategic customer partnerships and first-class service levels in mind, has proved exceptionally resilient. With an industry wide driver shortage in 2021, we still successfully delivered over 99% of our deliveries to our retail partners over the course of the year.

“The key to this success was threefold: the vast majority of our logistics operations are in-house rather than outsourced to a third-party, we were able to work really closely and collaboratively with our customers and supplying farmers to find the right solutions, and of course, none of this would have been possible without the ongoing commitment and loyalty of our hard-working colleagues.

“Despite these measures, labour shortages are one of the key issues facing the food supply chain, and that’s why our message is simple, if you have the necessary skills and qualifications to come and work at Müller Milk & Ingredients, then we would love to hear from you.

“Our aim is to be Britain’s private label dairy leader, and to get there, we must be the partner of choice for our retail partners, and we know that first class customer service is crucial.

“Our milk can be in fridges within only two days of leaving the farm, but we need great people to make that happen.”

To achieve its 99% service levels in 2021, MMI was able to leverage its logistics partnership with sister company Culina Group, a leading UK based food and drinks logistics provider with over 5,000 vehicles, 22,000 employees at peak and 20 million square feet of warehousing.

The dairy company also modernised its T&Cs to enable it to attract and retain suitable candidates.

The business is also finding innovative internal solutions to support and help employees gain their driver qualifications. Through its apprenticeship scheme and an in-house ‘Warehouse to Wheels’ training programme, several individuals have already become full time HGV drivers, with more currently progressing through their training.

Müller is also working collaboratively with organisations like Veterans into Logistics, who help place highly-trained ex-military personnel into work within the logistics industry.