Pelican scores contract with Middlesbrough Football Club

Middlesbrough Football Club has today announced a partnership with Pelican Procurement Services to undertake a review of its food-related procurement, with a view of creating annualised savings of £30,000.

Via a supplier retendering process, Pelican has already achieved a 10 percent saving for the club’s Food Wholesale category, with further work now underway to review a range of additional categories.

Following a competitive pitch, Pelican was awarded the contract to manage Middlesbrough Football Club’s food-related purchasing for its Riverside Stadium facilities and its Rockliffe Park training ground. This includes overseeing supplier tendering, product sourcing, pricing negotiations to centralising supplier invoicing and payments.

A number of specific categories are being reviewed as part of the contract, including fruit and vegetables, food wholesale, fresh seafood, confectionery and beverages.

Mark Ellis, Chief Operating Officer for Middlesbrough Football Club said: “As a club, we host on average 25 football games per year, which brings crowds of around 16,000 on the concourses, in addition to serving around 700 meals in the hospitality areas.

The English Championship, who club host a range of conferences, banquets, weddings and other events. Its chefs are responsible for creating menus for the varying events, however Ellis felt it was time to bring in a procurement specialist to help not only reduce food costs, but decrease the time his chefs spend on purchasing and administration.

Ellis added: “We selected Pelican for a number of reasons; the cost savings were clear and we are aiming to save at least 12 percent across all our food purchases over the course of the next 12 months. In addition, Pelican offered the most transparency, simpler terms and from our chefs’ perspectives, they trusted Pelican to deliver the products they want, when they want.”

As part of the partnership, Middlesbrough Football Club is adopting Pelican’s Purchasing Intelligence (Pi) online portal, which is a cloud-based procurement solution that is designed to provide complete visibility, management and control over purchasing spend, budgets, stock valuation and supplier invoices.

Shabaz Mohammed, Managing Director of Pelican Procurement Services said: “We are delighted to be working with Middlesbrough Football Club to manage its food-related procurement. Our comprehensive service enables the Club to completely outsource its purchasing requirements to us for its main Riverside Stadium facilities and also its training ground, Rockliffe Park.

“We pride ourselves on delivering a fully transparent, highly professional service and the team looks forward to creating both financial savings and operational efficiencies for Middlesbrough Football Club.”

Pelican is an expert in the procurement market, with over two decades of experience, it today manages total purchasing volumes of over £140m. For more information regarding Pelican’s range of procurement services, visit www.pelicanprocurement.co.uk  

For more details regarding Middlesbrough Football Club, visit www.mfc.co.uk