Premier Foods is one of Britain’s biggest food companies, whose household brands include Ambrosia, Angel Delight, Bisto, Mr Kipling, Homepride, Oxo, Sharwoods.

Premier Foods employ over 4,000 colleagues at 15 UK manufacturing sites and offices up and down the country.

In 2019, Premier Foods decided to transition their fleet from company cars to cash due to the increasing uncertainty and upwards trend of company car tax and the introduction of WLTP.  Their current fleet is made up of 500 cash takers and 50 company cars, which will move over to cash in time.

Premier Foods engaged TMC to help with the transition from cars to cash in a number of ways.  TMC were already managing Premier Food’s fuel card programme through their Fuel+ service and had helped Premier Foods deliver their previous cash allowance scheme in the most cost-efficient way through Cash iQ.  Cash iQ typically delivers total savings of around £1000 per year between employer and employee.

Premier Foods still use fuel cards, but TMC provide a payroll file each month to deduct the private mileage from employees’ pay packet.  This means Premier Foods retain all the benefits of a fuel card while the employees have no cash flow concerns.

All mileage data is audited to ensure journeys comply with Premier Food’s company policy. The auditing process involves an instant distance check via Google Maps and proactive communication between the driver and TMC’s Customer Services Team to correct any anomalies. Employees are reminded via SMS and email to submit their mileage claims on time.

TMC overlay mileage data with the fuel card data to perform a fuel management audit that ensures fuel cards are being used correctly, eliminating fraudulent spend, encouraging driver efficiency and ensuring the correct amount of private fuel is being reimbursed back to the company. TMC overlays the fuel transaction data with mileage claims to produce MPG and pence per mile reports in addition to identifying any anomalies in the following key areas:

• Fraudulent fills
• Over fills – TMC stores the vehicle tank capacity
• Motorway spend
• Multiple fills
• Small fills

Where an anomaly is flagged, an SMS message is sent to the employee, followed by a call from one of TMC’s Data Audit specialists to resolve the query. In turn, this process drives improvements in these key areas and ensures the account is corrected and up to date.

Premier Foods also receive management information that gives them full visibility of the business mileage and journeys undertaken as well as real world data on their fleet’s performance such as MPG and pence per mile to help steer their fleet strategy.

The move from company cars to cash allowance essentially meant the fleet moved from company owned assets to grey fleet.  The duty of care requirements remain the same but visibility and control isn’t as tight as the company aren’t providing the vehicles employees are driving.  Premier Foods have appointed TMC to provide driving licence, MOT and insurance checks.  Drivers must also state that they have read and understood Premier Food’s fleet policy before they can claim mileage to ensure they are aware of any changes.

Premier Foods also use our VAT iQ service, whereby we provide reports to enable Premier Foods to maximise their VAT reclaim on fuel.

In the first year of going live the combination of these solutions saved them c.26% off their fuel costs.

Lorna King from Premier Foods said:

“We enjoy a great long standing partnership with TMC who have worked with us to optimise the efficiency of our fleet.  This has also resulted in reduced costs and administration, increased visibility and the knowledge that our drivers have valid driving licences, business insurance and a road worthy vehicle.”