Cast your mind back 100 years and try to imagine what a food and grocery industry supply chain would have looked like.

You certainly wouldn't have spotted a refrigerated truck pulling into a depot full of produce from abroad, or retail-ready packaging being brought into the store.
 

New era, new training opportunities

The food and grocery industry has advanced significantly since the early 1900s, when IGD first started training industry professionals, and our training courses have developed to match an innovative and fast-paced environment.

It is fitting therefore that those who are accepted onto our Centenary Scholarship programme this year will be some of the first to participate in a brand new module on our Postgraduate qualification.

Sustainability across the supply chain is a particularly important issue, now and for the future, and our new module on Sustainable Supply Chains will reflect the importance of learning about all aspects in this area.

So what is sustainability and why is it so important?

Recent media coverage has tended to use the word 'sustainability' synonymously with 'green issues' and cutting our carbon footprint. It is however much more than that, as the diagram on the left illustrates.
 

Balancing act

A truly sustainable supply chain is a well balanced act between the economic, environmental and social impact of the chain.

It will take into account the following key factors:

Sustainable Supply Chains - the new module

The new postgraduate module has been created to fulfil a very important requirement: the need for managers to be able to tackle the issue of sustainability in all its different guises, across the supply chain.

	Embedding a sustainability mindset in our people is important for the future of the industry

Supply chain managers still need to be able to maximise service and operational efficiency as well as minimise costs, but managers of today and the future will need to do all of this against a background of sustainability challenges.
 

A journey

Sustainability is not just a fad or a trend that will die over time; it will shape the food and grocery industry for the foreseeable future. Candidates who take the Sustainable Supply Chain module will be able to see how the industry must continue on a sustainability journey in order to succeed in the future.

The module consists of four units which will be taught using a mixture of theory and interactive learning:

• module 1: What is the supply chain?
• module 2: An introduction to sustainability
• module 3: Sustainable solutions for the supply chain
• module 4: The future of the sustainable supply chain
 

More information:

We are offering up to 15 fully-funded Centenary Scholarship places on our Postgrad course, worth £3,500* each. Entries close on 30 June, so apply now for a chance to benefit from this great opportunity.

	Postgraduate Certificate in Food & Grocery Management
	This course is tutored by experts and validated by the University of Edinburgh. It will equip you with the skills and knowledge you need to keep your career moving apace, and is equivalent to 1/3 of a masters qualification (60 CAT points).

	Industry Expertise - Sustainability
	Our free sustainability information resource is a complete one-stop-shop for sustainability information, and has been designed to help businesses address the significant challenges that the future holds.

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Karen Chalmers is a Senior Supply Chain Analyst at IGD, responsible for managing ECR Workgroups on Sustainable Distribution and developing the knowledge base on sustainable supply chains for IGD’s research. She is author of IGD's Sustainable Distribution in 2008 report and also contributes to training and collaborative based programmes involving participants from across the food industry.

* At IGD non-member rate