Supplier Spotlight: Jalco

In January 2001, household cleaning and personal care manufacturer Jalco made its first delivery to ALDI. The delivery consisted of a single pallet of two types of laundry powder, Trimat and Almat, delivered off the back of a ute to one of ALDI’s first Australian stores at Bankstown Airport.

Fast forward to 2018 and Jalco, now part of the Pact Group, supplies 75 products in 150 different varieties to ALDI, keeping a product development lab and three separate manufacturing facilities across Sydney busy meeting demand.

One of many things Jalco and ALDI have led the market on is eliminating phosphate from products storewide. Phosphate has been found to cause algae blooms in waterways, which has a negative impact on both the environment and human health. As such, there has been a drive in the industry to move away from it in many cleaning and laundry products, with ALDI being the first supermarket in Australia to offer a completely phosphate free laundry range.

The future is bright

At its Silverwater Research and Development facility, there are 15 chemists working on product formulation to ensure ALDI can consistently lead the market on both price and quality, while also bringing new and exciting innovations to customers.

“Cleaning is not something people enjoy doing,” says Tim Goldring, National Business Manager at Jalco. “Every time I work with the ALDI buyer, he always talks about putting fun into cleaning, or at least making consumers’ lives easier. And that comes back to developing the best possible products at the lowest possible price, which is always at the forefront of everything we do.”

To make cleaning a little more fun, ALDI and Jalco might look at how to incorporate the latest fragrance trend, or formulate a cleaning product that limits timely steps in the cleaning process. For example, a laundry powder with a soaker or fabric softener all in one.

In personal care, trending ingredients include Argan Oil, Tea Tree Oil and Charcoal, so you’ll see products with these ingredients on shelves throughout the year at ALDI. There has also been a rising preference for natural fragrances derived from natural oils and ingredients.

Clean has never looked so green

“Historically, phosphate was the most cost effective active ingredient for stain removal,” Mr Goldring says. “That’s why companies always used it in their laundry powders and liquids.”

But the negative impact of phosphate was too hard to ignore.

“A lot of work by our Research and Development team went into figuring out how to remove that key ingredient while not compromising on performance. What we did instead was add enzymes, which are a natural cleaning agent and are readily bio-degradable, so we could still deliver a high quality product that was much better on the environment than phosphates.”

Dean Fleischmann, Buying Director at ALDI Australia, explains the ALDI and Jalco relationship is built on true collaboration, with quality and customer experience their number one imperatives. “We work together on every aspect of product development, including formulation, packaging and the manufacturing process, to ensure we deliver the best possible quality for our customers.”

Spotless savings

ALDI and Jalco work together to ensure any additional costs incurred in developing a superior product are minimised. This includes reducing the amount of product packaging used and creating this packaging on site. This saving is then passed on to the customer.  Unlike a lot of traditional manufacturers, Jalco also makes the bottles for its products in the same manufacturing line where they are filled. Not only is this positive for the environment as it eliminates the impact of additional transport, but it also helps Jalco supply a lower cost product.

“A big part of ALDI’s success, and ours as well, is ALDI’s key value proposition. Anything that we do with ALDI is about ensuring the product is the best performing product on the market, and ensuring that we do that at the best possible price,” says Mr Goldring.