Page 16 - Food&Drink Business magazine October 2022

COVER STORY
RMR Engineers Jeremy Irwin (left) and Tristan Hoy (right) review a client’s (centre) existing facility for nprocess upgrades and expansion planning.
Rethinking the process
With ever-increasing demand for Australian made goods, come growing pains for many food and beverage manufacturers. RMR Process founder and managing director, Peter Taitoko, explains there are better ways to grow manufacturing other than the traditional expansion routes.
WHEN we launched RMR Process in 2010, we made it
our mission to keep food manufacturing alive in Australia. At that time, much of Australia’s food manufacturing industry was disappearing overseas where products could be made more cheaply without the need for capital expansion.
We developed a scaling model, backed by over 25 years of industry experience, that enables growth while adapting to an ever-changing market, allowing manufacturers to make the right decisions about how to cost effectively grow their capability while managing risk.
A number of projects carried out under this model have already contributed to reversing the trend of food manufacturing going offshore by repatriating production capability.
Fast forward to today, and Australian food and beverage industry has never been busier. In fact, the sector is experiencing
intensifying pressure to expand its manufacturing capabilities to cope with the increasing demand for Australian made products. This is driving more and more food and beverage manufacturers to seek out alternatives to the traditional expansion model, fuelled by escalating building costs and extended timelines in today’s post Covid landscape.
We find that many manufacturers typically face the same issues, having a lack of resources and capability to expand their process capacity. However, we ensure that the products remain the focus of the expansion plans rather than the building, potentially saving on the cost of unnecessary capital outlay.
DON’T ROLL THE
DICE ON A NEW FACILITY Accurate costs and clarity of the project deliverables and investment returns can significantly reduce the project
risk. Thirty per cent of the projects that we undertake stem from customers that have stalled their project due to the high cost of construction.
We question what opportunities exist to reduce the budget by minimising construction and shifting the focus to greater processing capability, automation, energy reduction, and more efficient use of expensive real estate.
Our model helps reduce the complexity and cost of food manufacturing expansion, through the creation of short- and medium-term strategies for scaling growth. This may or may not include a new factory expansion in the first few years.
The key to every food manufacturing business is making high-quality product as efficiently as possible. The heartbeat of the business is often a key capital piece of equipment or process line that must not stop.
With a better understanding of the company’s strategic direction, we can explore options for where best to allocate funds. For example, if production volumes need to increase quickly, we may focus more on front-end batching, cooking and filling equipment. But if optimising existing production and lower operational costs is the goal, we may focus more on automating process and packaging lines. This process not only helps to minimise the factory footprint but also develop a plan for future growth.
A clean take on operations can identify ways to de- bottleneck, increase output or improve product consistency that doesn’t necessarily end in the need to build more infrastructure.
Our team does this with a lens focused keenly on understanding consumer requirements, as well as retail
16 | Food&Drink business | October 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au