Someone once told me the industry is like a tube map and I believe it’s a good analogy for how we handle data currently. There are countless ways to reach the same destination, but only some of them make sense.
My co-chair for the TraceGains get-together, Dan McGlynn – the company’s senior account executive for UK & IRE – agreed, describing the food and drink sector as “very data rich” but “insight poor”. And it’s this lack of insight that has resulted in the industry’s siloed way of working.
It’s also worth noting (and to extend my analogy further) that whilst there might be two different routes that take the same amount of time to get to destination X, it doesn’t make sense for your teams to arrive from different places. Why? Because they’ll end up with completely different stories (aka data) and then how do you know what data to follow, what decisions to make…?
We all want the same data
At the event, McGlynn described the sector, jovially, as “mad as a box of frogs”, though his words rang true.
“Everyone wants the same information, but we all ask for it a thousand different ways,” he said.
These silos have been created following an explosion of software companies launching a plethora of solutions, but as McGlynn explained, “not a lot of it is connected”. This means that you may have one solution to collect recipe data and another to collect carbon data. And although these two datasets may not sound like they relate, by connecting them you’ll likely ease a lot of headaches – especially as regulations continue to tighten and consumer demands shift to ‘green’ foods.
Further to this, many companies are also wedded to out-dated ways of working and internal bespoke systems that do not benefit the wider industry at a time when collecting scope 3 emissions becomes ever-more important.
“Everyone is investing a huge amount of time and effort filling out all these different portals, providing the same information that has been asked for in a thousand different ways. This is actually having a negative impact in some areas,” McGlynn continued.
“You want data in a way that you can easily consume it and you want it centralised.”
TraceGains has set out to solve this dilemma – making it easier for suppliers to standardise their data. One of the toolsets it offers which helps to remove duplication and connect the supply chain is called ‘Gather’. This is a networked ingredients marketplace and a collaborative platform that currently connects more than 450,000 ingredients/items from over 61,000 supply chain locations.
With Gather, TraceGains offers ingredient suppliers the ability to upload key documentation and reuse it multiple times, rather than having to manually repeat the task over and over again for their customers. Documentation can also be updated on the system, so there is one accurate source of truth for everyone.
The bonus is that every time someone else comes on board, the library grows. According to McGlynn, the company is on boarding new suppliers every week. As new manufacturers come on board, they find that many of their suppliers are already on the system, whilst new suppliers can be found quickly. In essence, you have access to a vast – and expanding – library of ingredient information, specifications and documentation. This data can then flow into the modular enterprise solutions to support supplier management programmes as well as wider compliance, NPD and sustainability teams.
Baker & Baker is among the manufacturers using the TraceGains Supplier Management platform which has enabled it to get all 12 of its sites across Europe ‘singing from the same data sheet’.
Sharing his experience with fellow attendees, Lewis Rogers-Duffield, lead supplier quality manager for Europe at Baker & Baker, explained that TraceGains has given the bakery producer an “added layer of assurance” by protecting its approved supplier database from unapproved changes to supply chains.
The solution has also given Baker & Baker real-time visibility of approved supplier locations, meaning it can “prevent changes that a paper approach could miss” and made it more nimble – a real benefit in this very unpredictable world.
“In the event of any disruption to our usual supply chains, TraceGains has allowed us to approve replacement suppliers at lightning speed and even create new introductions with other suppliers who are active within the TraceGains network,” said Rogers-Duffield.
He noted that the investment into TraceGains has also made other departments “more confident in their ability to self-serve” rather than asking for confirmation from his team. This, of course, not only empowers workers but speeds efficiency up massively.
TraceGains enables manufactures to search ingredient databases and access regular requested documentation at the click of a button rather than waiting days for a reply. With planned advancements in AI application, this process is set to become even more efficient, suggesting suppliers based on criteria you enter. And in response to one delegate’s queries on the day – yes, it can get very granular.
Sustainability
TraceGains has also recognised the power of collaboration itself and has partnered with other platforms to create a holistic solution. One of these partners is Sustained – an environmental impact management platform built for food and drink manufacturing, which provides fast, scalable Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) for products.
Sustained is utilising TraceGains software to collect all the raw material data from the supply chain, which can then be run through its data intelligence platform to provide environmental footprints data. This can then be used to make procurement decisions, for example.
Speaking on sustainability and data further, Sustained’s co-founder Carl Olivier said there has been a huge trend towards environmental LCA for a variety of reasons.
“Sometimes it’s mitigating reputational risk – perhaps they’ve seen a big supplier hit,” he said.
By having reliable data, you can not only use it to inform your recipe formulation to create more sustainable products, but you can also be safe in the knowledge that you aren’t greenwashing.
Whilst there’s a range of benefits to collecting data like this, doing so is becoming an imperative, with a range of new legislation demanding environmental insight, such as EUDR.
A big part of this is managing scope 3 emissions – but as Olivier explained, the scrutiny around the data you provide is becoming much fiercer.
“Increasingly we see businesses being asked not just to supply top down, spend-based carbon accounting for their business but also to provide product carbon footprinting data into a scope 3 assessment that’s an accurate representative of their supply chain and not some average data set they bought off the shelf.”
Olivier went onto say that there have also been “noises” from retailers in the UK, looking to introduce category level impact reduction as part of their briefs.
“It hasn’t shown up yet but there are noises being made around whether a manufacturer at an RFP (request for proposal) station needs to be able to do an indicative footprint on carbon, water, land use, etc., before they manufacture anything, just to win the deal.
“That flows up the chain and you have to start asking your supplies for better footprinting data and that can be a nightmare.”
From reactive to proactive
If data can be integrated into one version of the truth, it not only helps to reduce downtime, improve sustainability and perhaps even increase your business wins, but it also starts to open up exciting opportunities within food safety, such as better predictions and proactive mitigation.
On this topic, Samworth Brothers’ head of technical – regulatory & risk, Craig Darby, gave an example of how siloed data had led them to a withdrawal situation. They explained that after taking a step back, the investigation showed that the data actually told the company this was going to happen.
“We started looking outwards: ‘what do other people do?’” Darby shared.
In particular, the business looked to the Department of Defence and aviation industry and how these sectors use preventative and predictive mechanisms, alongside culture, to alleviate risk.
“We started adapting some of their processes to develop food safety performance indicators, going beyond just checking if the product is safe and instead monitoring whether the systems keeping it safe are degrading or under strain.”
You don’t want too many indicators, he advised, but just enough so you can take a step back and look at whether your factory is in control.
He added: “And it might still say it is in control from a traditional KPI perspective, but when you’re looking at that overall piece and where combined trends are going, is it indicating that you need to look further forwards?”
McGlynn agreed that the opportunities surrounding data and predictive/proactive approaches are very exciting and offered an example of how TraceGains is helping to make that a reality for businesses.
“We’ve got a tool that manages the goods intake process and certificate of analysis (COA),” he said. In very basic terms, the AI analyses the specification verses the COA and is able to identify if there are any issues with the batch within seconds.
“As your data starts to builds up and you have a two-, three-, four-year history of your suppliers, you can start to create risk dashboards and predict trends and know when to intervene.”
Using AI for COAs has started to become more commonplace and several of the companies present at the roundtable have been using it this way.
“It’s helped us realise what our suppliers weren’t giving us,” added one delegate.
It can also be used to spot certain aspects like differences in raw materials (e.g. moisture content) and programme the appropriate baking time or temperature needed to ensure consistency for the end product.
“Predictive modelling is a powerful tool across all areas of the business. It is not used enough to help solve business problems or continuous improvement,” shared another delegate.
There were some reservations around the use of AI, with one delegate suggesting it could be “dangerous” if wholly relied upon.
“We’re finding our technical experts are being used less for their expertise in favour of artificial intelligence (AI),” they explained.
McGlynn agreed that problems could arise if AI is mismanaged and it goes back to that mantra of “if you put garbage in, you get garbage out”.
To paraphrase some of the delegates as we summed up the session: You need decision-grade data that is centralised, trusted and you can stand behind; and then you need to ensure that you onboard all outstanding silos into the fold to unify sources of data throughout the business.
From there, the world is your oyster.
This insight was taken from a recent roundtable organised by Food Manufacture in June 2025 and kindly sponsored by TraceGains. If you are interested in hosting your own roundtable, please reach out to alix.hunter@wrbm.com.