Day 062 - 06 Dec 94 - Page 47
1 A. No, for cold drinks.
2
3 Q. Are they the waxed card ones or what?
4 A. They probably would be poly coated board but we are
5 talking about very small items here. I could not give you
6 a complete list because, as I said, they are small items
7 and I could not do that from memory.
8
9 Q. When was that, roughly?
10 A. Anywhere and any time when needed. As I said, it was
11 generally done, for instance, to start something up or to
12 do a special promotion for which we had an item available
13 in the States, but we did not have an equivalent here in
14 Europe and then it was brought in.
15
16 Q. The large cups, I mean, were they only introduced recently
17 in the UK?
18 A. No, no, because I do not even think that that was
19 something for the UK.
20
21 Q. What for elsewhere in Europe then?
22 A. Yes, and it might only have been something for like a
23 couple of months or so, because we do have a lot of cup
24 suppliers here in Europe. So, in principle, when we can,
25 we source at our own suppliers.
26
27 Q. What would have been the problem with getting suppliers
28 from the local suppliers of big cups?
29 A. They may not have been available. There may not have
30 been capacity at the time. There can be various reasons.
31 It an also have been that they are running out of, or they
32 stopped using something in the States and will then try to
33 see if there is other markets that still can use it, so
34 similar approach that we use in Europe. If one market
35 stops, phases out of a promotion, then we will see if we
36 can use that packaging in another market.
37
38 Q. Right. Is that the sort of thing that happened when
39 different sections of the company stopped using polystyrene
40 foam?
41 A. That probably happened as well. Obviously, parts of
42 McDonald's did remain using the foam clam shell, so if the
43 design is suitable for that other country, then you feed
44 those stocks into the other country.
45
46 Q. Do you know of that happening?
47 A. In that instance?
48
49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Is this a matter which is significant in some
50 way?
51
52 MS. STEEL: It may be.
53
54 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Are you putting a positive suggestion or just
55 exploring?
56
57 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It just occurs to me, compared with the
58 millions of some packages which there must be which you
59 have dealt with, whether a few tens of thousands of cups,
60 if that is what they were, or even a hundred thousand cups
