Media Release

Talley’s food production sites are safe and hygienic

Talley’s CEO Tony Hazlett says health, safety and hygiene is a priority for the company.

“We want everyone in our Talley’s family to arrive home safely after their workday,” Hazlett said. “Equally, the safety and quality of our food products is a priority. We undertake a programme of multiple measures to ensure this is the case.”

Hazlett said measures include extensive staff training, including documentation, in different languages, toolbox meetings at least weekly, Care Cards that staff can submit with any issues they wish to raise, and independent and self audits, whose findings are acted upon. We promote engagement with our staff on Health and Safety, and each month celebrate Health and Safety champions throughout the company.

“We have high staff engagement on Health and Safety because they are with us on our journey of continuous improvement. We are always seeking to look at ways to further improve our systems and engagement with staff. This journey will never finish and all of our staff working with us on the improvements is vital to the way we manage now and wish to in the future,” he said.

Hazlett said that as well as cleaning throughout the day in the factories, it is standard that production lines are shut down for full cleaning on a regular basis.

“Running a 24/7 factory environment means our regular cleaning schedule is imperative and so we shut down for up to two days every few weeks to ensure a substantive clean,” he said. “Our factory is also certified to BRC (British Retail Consortium) standard, which is an internationally recognised Global Food Safety initiative to ensure good manufacturing principles and hygiene processes. We are registered under MPI’s National Programmes 2, which includes verification of hygiene and food safety.

Talley’s regularly undertakes external audits of its machine guarding, as well as monthly hazard hunts with staff to ensure that the factory is operating safely. Any issues raised are triaged and actioned according to the priorities set by our risk assessment matrix.

“A recent audit has recently recommended tertiary level accreditation under the ACC partnership programme, which looks at all aspects of our health and safety systems, as well as our interaction with staff and engagement in proactive health, safety, and wellbeing systems. Further external and internal audits of each site happen a minimum of annually to ensure that we are doing as we are supposed to.

“Unfortunately, a staff member did incur an injury in March at our Ashburton vegetable factory, which is upsetting, and we are supporting them back into work,” he said. “Despite this incident, the Talley’s Ashburton factory is not unsafe. The WorkSafe investigation report noted that our health and safety procedures are fit-for-purpose and only recommended a small adjustment to a guard on the machine the staff member was using, which we immediately made.

“Of course, one accident is one accident too many, and we know our health, safety and hygiene journey will continue. We will keep investing heavily in this area throughout our company, to keep our people safe, and our food safe for our customers.”

Back to News