Sainsbury’s - Sultana Bran

Sainsbury offer a superb service on tracing the origins of their organic produce. But can they provide the same information about their own brand manufactured multi ingredient products? Here’s a picture of the product in question. Sainsbury “own brand” Sultana Bran.

Sultana Bran Pack

And the product best before data and batch/lot code(?).

Best Before Date

Had to post this one via the Sainsbury’s web site at http://www.sainsburys.co.uk. It took me a few mins to find the place to post the question.

Message sent at 12:50pm (ish) on 2nd January 2005.

Subject: Sultana Bran

Hello,

We regularly buy Sainsbury’s Sultana Bran from your store at Stratton St Margaret, near Swindon.

I enjoy looking up the origins of the organic produce we buy from you. It gives me confidence in your products.

I was wondering if you could provide me the same information concerning the origins of my packet of Sultana Bran?

It is marked with a best before end of DEC 2006 and a code 53350944W 11:16.

I recognise that this is not going to be as simple as for a single fruit from a single supplier. So please could you just tell me the origins of the top 3 ingredients listed (Wheat, Sultanas, Wheat Bran). Again I understand that there may well be many suppliers involved for each of these items. Please just tell me what you can. If you are unable to do so, please can you explain why.

I regularly ask such questions of the companies whose products I buy, I publish the questions and the responses at http://trulyresponsible.org.

Many thanks for your help.

Simon Warrick

I’ve received what looks like an automated reply…

From: customerservice@sainsburys.co.uk
Date: 2nd January 2006 13:03pm

Thank you for your interest in Sainsbury’s. We are currently dealing with your request and will get back to you shortly.

Kind regards

Sainsbury’s Customer Services

I’ve now had a full reply from Sainsburys. Good for them, they didn’t quibble about giving me the information. But it wasn’t as detailed as I had hoped, so I’ll try and get a bit more.

Here’s what they sent me and my second set of questions.

Dear Simon

Thank you for your email. We are always pleased to hear from our customers and to help with any queries they may have.

I have contacted our buyer about the origin of the ingredients in our sultana bran. He has confirmed that the wheat and wheat bran are from the UK and the sultanas are originated from Turkey.

Thank you once again for contacting us. I hope this information is useful.

Kind regards

Gemma Wilkinson
Sainsbury’s Customer Services

[THREAD ID:1-2BJWWL]

Here’s my request for a bit more information.

Hello Gemma,

Thanks very much for getting back to me so quickly.

Is there any chance that for the particular batch of Sultana Bran I quoted that you could give me details of batch numbers of these three ingredients used, and from that give me some more detail on which farmers were responsible - as per the mechanism you use for your organic fruit etc? I guess it’s not going to be single farms, but guess for each batch it must be just a few…?

I have found that I am able to get this sort of information from some manufacturers and not others, and would like to understand why it can be provided for some things and not others and whether or not you can reveal this information for Sultana Bran?

Many thanks in advance.

Simon