Photo: Paul Empson – General Manager, Bakers Basco
London, UK – June 14, 2023 – Polish Village Bakery and Adkins Bakery are the latest bakeries to join the Bakers Basco national membership scheme, adopting the industry standard Omega bread basket for deliveries and benefiting from ongoing operational and recovery support from the Bakers Basco team to ensure sufficient equipment supplies.
Established in 2004, Manchester-based Polish Village Bakery is a local favourite in the North West England area producing a range of handmade bread and rolls, based on authentic Polish recipes. Meanwhile, Nottingham-based Adkins Bakery has been delivering freshly baked products to businesses across Nottinghamshire and the Midlands, for over 50 years.
Bakers Basco was set up in 2006 by five of the UK’s leading plant bakers including Allied Bakeries, Fine Lady Bakeries, Frank Roberts & Sons, Hovis and Warburtons – representing more than 55% of the bakery market in the UK – to buy, manage and police the use of a standard basket for the delivery of bread to retailers and wholesalers.
Including the shareholder members, a total of 25 bakers pay a small fee to license the equipment. Member benefits include routine stock audits across bakery sites and supply locations – to help plan for any regular or irregular spikes in activity, recovery assistance – to ensure the safe return of equipment to the supply chain, real-time reporting – for full transparency of equipment levels, and access to ongoing dedicated Bakers Basco support.
Andrzej Kurek, at Polish Village Bakery, says: “Keeping a track of our equipment has always been a challenge so we’re looking forward to benefiting from all that the Bakers Basco scheme has to offer to ensure we have constant, sufficient equipment to run our licensed business. Not only are we benefiting from time and cost efficiencies, but the Omega basket contributes positively to the circular economy, so we’re doing our part to help the environment too.”
By joining the scheme, both bakeries will benefit from affordability of the equipment controlled by Bakers Basco versus having to pay to replace their own equipment. The membership starts with a license of 5,000 Omega baskets and is expected to increase further in the coming months.
“We’re delighted to welcome Polish Village Bakery and Adkins Bakery to the Bakers Basco membership scheme,” says Paul Empson, General Manager, Bakers Basco. “In the past 17 years, membership of the Bakers Basco scheme has increased from the original five shareholders to cover 25 UK plant bakeries, ranging in size from small to large. All of them share the benefits of being members, knowing they can rely on us to make sure they have the bread baskets they need to ensure a consistent supply of their goods.”
Before Bakers Basco launched, the UK’s bakeries used a multitude of different and incompatible bread basket designs. They also suffered massively from equipment failure, misuse and theft. It’s estimated that some bakeries expected to lose as many as 50% of their bread baskets across the course of a year – leading to huge costs and inconvenience.
The company currently manages an equipment pool of approximately five million sturdy, reusable Omega Baskets and 500,000 dollies, which are part of the ‘circular economy’ – designed to last many years, with each piece of kit recycled potentially 400 times and the resulting raw plastic used to make more baskets before it reaches the end of its useful life.
