For the fourth year in a row, Culina Logistics has fitted thousands of miniature hand-knitted hats to bottles of innocent smoothies sold in aid of Age Concern. The innocent Big Knit campaign is aimed at raising over £200,000 to help keep older people warm during the winter months. The products are available while stocks last at Sainsbury's stores only. For every hat-wearing bottle sold, 50p is donated to Age Concern.

The highly unusual added value service is part of the flexible supply chain solution Culina provides for innocent. Nearly 400,000 hats have been individually fitted to a range of 250ml smoothie drinks at Culina's state-of-the-art chilled distribution centre at Prime Point in Staffordshire.

The hats are knitted by members of the public and at Age Concern centres across the country, and then sent to innocent.

"The annual knitted hats event has really taken off this year and our value added services team has been working flat out to ensure they reach the stores on time," says Rien Brakel, managing director of Culina.

Jane Burkitt, Head of Logistics at innocent, is impressed by the flexibility of service Culina can offer.

She comments: "This is an important piece of work for us, and one that reflects Culina's ability to deliver out-of-the-ordinary services. As a company we've continued to expand in 2007 with new product lines and flavours but they've been able to keep up with our growth too."

The money raised during the campaign is also used to help provide a variety of activities and interests for elderly people at Age Concern centres, such as mental agility classes, fitness exercises, educational talks and web-surfing lessons.