Müller

To meet rigorous standards, continuously improve safety when working across multiple sites, and manage contractor compliance, Müller chose EcoOnline’s Chemical Safety solutions to help digitise processes and drive the company’s safety behaviour.

Müller is a multi-national producer of dairy products employing over 20,000 people throughout Europe. In the UK, Müller develops, manufactures, and markets a wide range of branded and private-label dairy products made with milk from over 1,500 farmers in Britain for the UK market. It operates through three business units in the UK: Müller Yogurt & Desserts, Müller Milk & Ingredients, and Milk & More.

With over 8,000 people spread across 80+ sites, Müller deals with several health and safety challenges, including managing their hazardous substances safely and compliantly. Operating a complex supply chain, managing risk consistently, achieving the high health and safety standards required, and standardising safety processes and performance, is a key priority for the organisation.

Müller sources materials from a wide range of suppliers throughout the world, which adds importance to operating sustainably throughout the supply chain. As a responsible family run business, it applies strict terms and conditions on all of its suppliers to ensure that robust standards are met.

The key challenge for Müller was to unite standards and processes together under one strategy. This had historically proved difficult as the many sites had differing systems, risks, and capabilities.

Staff would have to spend a significant amount of time on updating contractor information and keeping chemical assessments up to date.

Having rapidly expanded, and significantly investing in its dairy and distribution network since 1994, the health and safety team required a framework to standardise operational excellence activities and ways of working across the business.

Sypol has a long and proven track record of helping food manufacturers, working with more than 40 companies to manage the unique COSHH challenges associated with food production.

With ongoing changes in legislation, the software also flags when COSHH assessments need to be updated in line with new legislation. This enabled Müller to better unite standards and meet compliance across sites. 

The business now has a world class Chemical Safety management system in which performance can be monitored against. This has allowed Müller to identify areas for improvement across its many sites. Müller has also been able to influence employee attitudes and behaviours about safety.

To produce the technical COSHH assessments that they required, Sypol has helped to improve their management of hazardous substances with a system that can scale with the demands of the business. Müller has significantly improved the way it manages COSHH risks and compliance.