Food & Consumer Goods
From field to shelf - transforming operations across the food and consumer goods value chain
We help food processors, beverage groups, agricultural cooperatives, and consumer goods manufacturers accelerate product development, secure volatile supply chains, transform manufacturing performance, and build the digital backbone that food safety, traceability, and decarbonisation now demand.
Challenges & How we help
01
Launching the right products, faster and greener
Consumer expectations are shifting faster than most product development organisations can follow. Clean label, organic, local sourcing, sustainable packaging, new agricultural certifications – the list grows every year and varies by market. Meanwhile, regulatory requirements are tightening, while retailers expect new products to be developed, approved, and launched faster than ever. The companies that win are those that can accelerate time-to-market whilst embedding cost, sustainability, and regulatory constraints from the earliest design stages – not bolting them on at the end.
Structure and deploy PLM for formulation and packaging management
Implement product lifecycle management as the single source of truth for recipe data, ingredient specifications, packaging specifications, and regulatory documentation, harmonised across sites and product lines
Redesign the R&D-to-production handoff
Streamline the gates between recipe development, shelf-life and stability testing, scale-up, and manufacturing to eliminate the delays that add months to launch timelines
Design to Value
Embed cost targets and sustainability requirements into product design from day one, using structured value analysis to eliminate over-specification and reach the right value-to-cost ratio
Structure innovation pipeline governance
Establish stage-gate processes, resource allocation discipline, and business case rigour across the innovation portfolio, from concept to industrial launch
Eco-design and lifecycle assessment
Integrate environmental criteria into product development using LCA tools, guiding reformulation decisions, packaging reduction, and new-certification readiness
02
Turning food safety, traceability, and regulatory complexity into a competitive edge
Food safety and traceability regulation is intensifying across every major market. HACCP requirements, allergen labelling obligations, evolving EU rules on deforestation-free supply chains, and novel-ingredient registrations create a compliance landscape that shifts constantly and varies by market. Meanwhile, consumers and retailers demand full transparency: not vague "natural" or "clean label" claims, but substantiated, traceable data from farm to shelf. Companies that treat compliance as a cost centre fall behind those that build it into their product data architecture from the start and turn it into a trust advantage.
Structure PLM for regulatory data management
Organise regulatory workflows within PLM so ingredient compliance, market-specific restrictions, allergen declarations, and safety documentation are managed as core product data, not side processes
Build end-to-end traceability architectures
Design data models and system integrations that enable full traceability from raw material or farm, through processing and manufacturing, to distribution and point of sale
Design compliance programme governance
Establish cross-functional regulatory programmes that anticipate regulatory change, assess portfolio impact, and coordinate reformulation and re-registration across markets
Structure data governance across the product lifecycle
Define data ownership, quality standards, and interoperability so product information flows reliably between R&D, quality, regulatory, production, and commercial teams
03
Securing and optimising the supply chain from field to shelf
Food and consumer goods supply chains manage high-volume flows under razor-thin margins, with raw material costs driven by harvest cycles, commodity markets, and geopolitical disruption. Add perishability, cold chain integrity, promotional volatility, a distribution landscape fragmenting across mass retail, food service, e-commerce, and direct-to-consumer – and the operational complexity is immense. Resilience is not a strategy exercise. It is built in the design of the network, the robustness of planning processes, and the quality of supplier relationships.
S&OP design and deployment
Structuring executive S&OP processes that align demand forecasting, production capacity, and inventory strategy across multi-site, multi-channel operations
Distribution network and logistics optimisation
Modelling scenarios to right-size warehouse footprints, automate distribution centres, reduce transport costs, and increase delivery frequency across EMEA and global networks
Cold chain and temperature-sensitive logistics
Designing logistics strategies for chilled, frozen, and ambient flows, including outsourcing models, fleet optimisation, and last-mile integrity
Road-to-market transformation
Redesigning go-to-market models for international subsidiaries, balancing direct distribution, wholesale, food service, and omnichannel routes to serve evolving retail formats
Procurement and supplier resilience
Securing raw material and packaging supply in volatile markets, integrating sustainability criteria into supplier management, and building multi-source strategies to reduce exposure
04
Transforming plants: performance, energy, and sustainability
Food and consumer goods manufacturing is high-volume, margin-sensitive, and facing a triple constraint: deliver more performance from existing assets, cut energy consumption and carbon emissions against quantified targets, and do it with a workforce that is harder to attract and retain every year. Most companies have not exhausted the gains available through structured operational improvement – but they need to combine lean disciplines with energy transformation and industrial strategy, not treat them as separate workstreams.
Lean manufacturing and production excellence
Deploying structured performance frameworks across multi-site operations to improve line efficiency, reduce waste, and increase throughput without capital investment
Product loss reduction
Identifying root causes of material and product losses across production lines, designing targeted action plans, and embedding continuous improvement routines
Industrial strategy and manufacturing footprint
Defining target manufacturing footprints, supporting site specialisation decisions, and building the industrial masterplan that rationalisation, growth, or post-merger integration requires
Energy efficiency and plant decarbonisation
Building site-level energy masterplans covering Scopes 1 and 2, deploying lean energy methods to reduce consumption without investment, and defining decarbonisation roadmaps with quantified trajectories
Circular economy and co-product valorisation
Assessing circular economy potential, designing operational models for waste reduction, co-product recovery, and packaging circularity
05
Building the digital backbone and transforming the organisation
Food and consumer goods companies – from cooperatives with distributed governance to fast-growing mid-market brands – often operate with fragmented IT landscapes, siloed data, and organisations designed for a simpler era. The need for end-to-end traceability, real-time performance management, and ESG reporting is exposing these gaps. Digital transformation and organisational transformation must go hand in hand – because deploying an ERP or a PLM without transforming the processes, the governance, and the people around it is a recipe for expensive failure.
Lean manufacturing and production excellence
Defining target IT architectures, managing ERP/PLM/APS… selection and deployment, and harmonising fragmented application landscapes across sites and business units
End-to-end traceability and data governance
Deploying traceability solutions from raw material sourcing to retail shelf, structuring MDM and PIM, and building the data governance that food safety, regulatory, and ESG reporting require
AI and data for operations
Defining AI strategy and roadmap: smart formulation and regulatory management, demand forecasting, yield optimisation, quality prediction. Deploying models that deliver measurable operational value
CSRD and ESG data industrialisation
Structuring the data collection, governance, and reporting processes that sustainability regulation now demands, connecting operational data to corporate ESG commitments
Change management and talent development
Supporting leadership teams through large-scale transformation, mobilising managers across distributed sites, developing the competencies the sector struggles to attract, and embedding new ways of working
Powered by Mews Labs
Mews Labs embeds advanced analytics, simulation, and AI directly into our food and consumer goods engagements – turning operational data into decision-making advantage.
Smart formulation
Artificial Intelligence embedded in PLM tools to propose automatic recipes matching the customer brief.
Demand forecasting and planning optimisation
Machine learning models that improve forecast accuracy by integrating promotional calendars, weather data, seasonality, and sell-out signals, feeding directly into S&OP and production scheduling.
Supply chain network simulation
Mathematical modelling and scenario simulation to optimise distribution networks, warehouse locations, and transport flows across complex multi-tier supply chains.
Energy consumption modelling
Physics-based and hybrid models that identify energy reduction opportunities at site level, simulate decarbonisation investment scenarios, and track performance against targets.
Production scheduling and yield optimisation
Operations research and constraint-based algorithms applied to multi-product, multi-site manufacturing: sequencing, raw material allocation, and co-product maximisation.
Explore our expertises
Many challenges sit at the intersection of strategy, operations, and technology. We bring together complementary practices to address them.
Selected Food & Consumer Goods projects
EMEA logistics masterplan and road-to-market transformation
Redesign the logistics and distribution network across 40 EMEA subsidiaries, and transform the road-to-market model for 7 international subsidiaries facing shifting retail channels and margin pressure.
New logistics masterplan deployed.
Distribution cost reduction achieved.
Go-to-market models redesigned per subsidiary to support omnichannel and food service growth.
Decarbonisation and energy efficiency masterplan
Define a decarbonisation roadmap and energy efficiency masterplan for the Cheese BU's manufacturing sites, covering Scopes 1 and 2 emissions reduction.
Site-level energy masterplan delivered.
Priority investments identified.
Decarbonisation trajectory aligned with group sustainability commitments.
Dairy production planning optimisation
Replace manual planning processes with an agile, constraint-based scheduling tool capable of optimising dairy production across multiple sites with shared resources and seasonal demand variability.
Anaplan-based planning solution deployed.
Scheduling cycle reduced from days to hours.
Planners shifted from data consolidation to exception-based management.
PLM, from scoping to deployment
Alignment of multi-sites entities on R&D & Quality processes and single digital solution to replace existing PLM.
Single tool deployed across countries, improving data continuity, data exchanges and efficiency.
Our Food & Consumer Goods clients
Meet our Food & Consumer Goods experts
Our food and consumer goods partners bring hands-on experience across the full value chain – from agricultural cooperatives and processors to multinational food and beverage groups.
From field to shelf - and everything in between
Whether you are accelerating product launches, redesigning your supply chain, transforming your plants, or building the digital backbone your operations need – we bring the sector expertise and operational depth to make it work.
Get in touch