Transforming export compliance: AgrigateOne's impact on the UK food industry

AgrigateOne is a software company that provides technological solutions to the fresh produce industry. It offers real-time tracking, smart document generation, unified data, dynamic reporting and precise forecasting tools.

In collaboration with Digital Catapult through the Made Smarter Innovation | Digital Supply Chain Hub programme, AgrigateOne embarked on a mission to enhance the efficiency of tackling documentation challenges faced by food manufacturing businesses.  

Introduction

Import and export documentation challenges are key issues for UK food manufacturing, particularly the volume of manual documentation required when importing and exporting goods, leading to significant administrative and compliance burdens.

Partnering with Mackle Food, AgrigateOne explored addressing these challenges with digital technologies for an initial aim of automating export documentation for Mackle, to alleviate time consuming administrative burdens at the beginning of the supply chain.

Automating export documentation

Much of the data required for export, and further down the supply chain, originates at the point of product manufacture. By integrating with Mackle Food’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, the solution built by AgrigateOne decreases the manual processes required when creating export documentation. This automated solution helps pre-populate common documentation like commercial invoices and packing lists, decreasing the manual input required.

To embed these new processes, AgrigateOne trained members of the Mackle team to upskill them in the use of digital technologies and advanced software, moving these individuals away from using more rudimentary pieces of software on a daily basis.

As a result of successfully embedding this solution into a live industrial environment, Mackle saw the reduction of manual input for export documentation fall by 50%, improving in efficiency in the way the team worked to free members up for other tasks. Not only that but AgrigateOne has improved the data efficiencies within Mackle’s current ERP system, providing them with uniformed documentation sets so there is a similar structure per client.

Overcoming compliance hurdles

Furthermore, the solution also incorporated an interoperable data pipeline with Rune, an external proprietary software clearance product, developed by British Telecoms (BT) Group.

Rune uses the data obtained from the manufacturing source, in this case Mackle, to push information down the supply chain, creating greater transparency for use of pre-clearance of shipping containers through customs. This further alleviates administrative processes at ports (thereby shortening export time) and reduces costs throughout the supply chain.

Additionally, by introducing traceability of containers through greater transparency, it allowed Mackle to visualise stock movements from Northern Ireland, allowing them to provide insights to their clients for more accurate estimated departure and arrival dates.

Deployment and scaling

Not only did the development of the data pipeline with Rune help Mackle Food overcome challenges around compliance, but it also allowed AgrigateOne’s to further test and develop their solution for pre-clearance within a real-world industry setting. This opportunity provided through the Digital Supply Chain Hub, with the expert guidance from Digital Catapult, helped AgrigateOne to determine product-market fit and create a plan for commercialisation, with the goal of deploying the solution at scale across UK supply chains.

AgrigateOne is planning to deploy and test its minimum viable product (MVP) further alongside other SMEs operating within UK industry, in addition to aiming to secure additional funding for further product development improvements.

Colin Steenson, Purchasing Supply Chain Manager, Mackle Food Company said -

“The work undertaken by AgrigateOne to develop a process by which we can improve the accuracy of information and reduce the time spent on completion of export documentation for our existing export business has led to a significant improvement in the time spent on generating the various levels of documents required for export.”