Sector expertise
Food Production
& Drink Manufacturing
We help food and drink producers protect margin, control recipe costs and make better decisions from batch to pallet.
Why this sector
Your recipe is fixed.
Your ingredients aren't.
Ingredients don't move together.
Butter, cocoa, wheat and packaging each move on their own cycle — weather, harvest, disease, freight. A single inflation figure tells you nothing useful about your recipe.
Your price is agreed long before your costs are known.
Customer price lists and retailer agreements are set for a period. The market isn't. You carry the gap until the next review, and the next review is a negotiation.
Margin hides at recipe and batch level.
Most producers know the gross margin on the business. Far fewer know it by product, by pack size, by run — which is where it's actually won or lost.
The line only earns when it's running.
Changeovers, allergen cleandowns and short runs on too many SKUs cost real hours. And what you overfill to stay legal, you give away on every single pack.
We understand how food and drink producers actually run — and where margin disappears between the recipe sheet and the finished pallet.
How we help
Diagnostics built for food and drink producers.
Five areas. One at a time. Each a fixed-price answer to a question you've been carrying.
Business Control
- Who can change a recipe, and who prices the change
- How specs, allergens and shelf life are controlled
- Production-to-office flow on yield, waste and downtime
- Key-person dependency in NPD, technical and planning
Financial Performance
- True cost per recipe, per batch and per pack
- Yield, giveaway and waste measured against standard
- Margin by product, customer and pack size
- Cash tied up in raw materials, packaging and finished stock
Growth Clarity
- Which products and customers are worth the line time
- Price reviews backed by your own cost movement, not the market's
- Where volume has been bought at a margin you can't sustain
- Customer concentration and route to market
Funding & Capital
- Readiness before approaching a lender
- Funding raw materials and packaging ahead of payment
- Real headroom across cash and facilities
- Whether the next line, oven or filler genuinely pays back
Digital & AI Readiness
- Whether production, stock and accounts systems connect
- Getting batch, yield and waste data out without rekeying
- Where automation removes technical and compliance admin
- A sequenced plan, not a shopping list
Impact in practice
The numbers behind the pressure.
Food and drink production is a demanding sector to run profitably. These are the industry realities we help producers see clearly in their own business.
24% up, 6% down
Your ingredients and your factory moved opposite ways
The World Bank expects energy prices to rise 24% and fertiliser 31% in 2026, while agricultural commodity prices fall 6% as earlier cocoa and coffee shortages unwind. No single inflation figure describes anybody's recipe.
Reference: World Bank Commodity Markets Outlook, 2026
7.3% against 3.5%
What you buy rose at twice the rate of what you charge
UK producer input prices rose 7.3% in the year to June 2026, while factory gate prices rose 3.5%. That difference gets absorbed somewhere, and it is usually the recipe.
Reference: Office for National Statistics, Producer Price Inflation, June 2026
13%
Of all UK food waste happens in manufacturing
Manufacturing accounts for around 13% of the UK's estimated 10.7 million tonnes of annual food waste. WRAP's own research found more than half the food waste from manufacturing and retail is avoidable.
Reference: WRAP, via House of Commons Library research briefing on food waste
Ready to improve performance in your food or drink production business?
Book a discovery call to see how we can help.