AGRI-FOOD

“DEAR DIRECTORS, I ASKED FOR € 50 M IN SAVINGS OVER 2 YEARS, NOT € 30 M OVER 3 YEARS”

Actual quote from the CEO of a major food industry player during a recent executive committee meeting

In a sector under relentless cost and margin pressure, the food industry is being pushed to its limits. Traditional players and new entrants alike are driving unprecedented levels of competition. Across the board, leaders face four key challenges :

With volatile raw material prices, rising energy and logistics costs, stricter regulatory requirements, and growing consumer expectations around sustainability, health, and quality, production costs in the agri-food industry are steadily increasing. At the same time, fierce competition and high price sensitivity among consumers limit the ability of companies to pass these costs on through higher prices.
In this challenging context, profitability can only be sustained through optimal operational efficiency. This demands rigorous control over the entire supply chain, proactive waste reduction strategies, greater reliance on automation, and the agility to quickly adapt to evolving market dynamics and consumer trends.

To protect their margins, industry players must not only produce better and faster, but also continuously
innovate while ensuring regulatory compliance and customer satisfaction.

The first instinct for most executives is to launch innovation and optimization strategies: investing in R&D, rethinking sourcing and supplier commitments, and driving operational excellence initiatives across production lines. On paper, in Excel and PowerPoint, these strategies often look impressive. But how well are they executed by organizations that may not be fully equipped to handle such transformations?

To absorb rising cost and production pressures in a sustainable and efficient way — pressures the industry knows will only intensify — deeper, structural questions must be addressed :

Ultimately, the real challenge isn’t so much about defining a new strategy — it’s about the organization’s ability to execute that strategy with maximum speed and operational efficiency. That’s precisely why I created the consulting firm Profit Implement. After several years working in leading international consultancies specialized in operational excellence, I came to the same conclusion as many executives : traditional consulting often remains too superficial to deliver the expected gains.

To help leaders successfully navigate strategic pivots, Profit-Implement offers support on two essential levels :

Because real performance starts where strategy meets execution.

€55 million in savings for a ‘field-to-fork’ industry leader

To illustrate our approach, let’s take a real example of a project carried out for the agri-food division of a major French group (€540 million in revenue).

By applying our Profit Through People methodology — a program involving all levels of management, from the General Manager to team leaders — we were able to generate significant gains in record time.

Initial diagnostic : Three weeks of field immersion, analysis of operational ratios, and continuous, detailed observation of production lines to detect sources of waste and inefficiency.

Identified potential : through our approach, we identified up to €55 million in annual savings, representing 10% of the company’s revenue :

• Better use of raw materials
• Optimization of energy consumption and maintenance processes
• Increased workforce productivity (training, precise workforce planning and steering)
• Group-level renegotiation of procurement contracts (meat, ingredients, packaging)
• Stock reduction and optimized pricing management to avoid loss-making sales
• Reorganization of support functions based on a zero-based budgeting approach

• ROI : 6 to 8 times the initial investment in the very first year

• Visible improvement from week 6 : losses reversed, measurable productivity gains already achieved.

A NEGLECTED — YET VERY REAL — SOURCE OF MARGIN IN THE AGRIFOOD INDUSTRY

From strategy to tangible results, Profit-Implement don’t just deliver recommendations. We work alongside you to implement your strategic decisions within your organization, all the way through to visible, measurable, and sustainable results. Drawing on our deep expertise in operational process optimization, we have developed a unique approach built around four key pillars :

Diagnosis (2 to 3 weeks on average)
• We start with a thorough analysis of your operational performance indicators (raw material consumption, OEE, waste rates, and more)
• This is paired with in-depth field observation : full immersion across your key departments (Purchasing, Customer Service, Production Lines, etc.) and targeted interviews
• Objective: identify and quantify every
possible source of savings.

Lever Identification
• We map out high-impact levers across raw materials, energy, labor, maintenance, pricing, and more
• This leads to the development of a detailed, prioritized, and costed action plan.

Operational Execution
• We provide intensive on-site support over 6 to 8 months to embed best practices, streamline operating processes, and eliminate logistical inefficiencies
• Our managerial coaching empowers each team leader to become their “own scope CEO”: every manager is equipped with tailored, actionable indicators to fine-tune their team’s working methods in real time.

Sustaining Results Through Behavioral Change
• We help embed new managerial mindsets by training your teams to manage their own performance like elite athletes, with discipline, focus, and measurable goals
• We also work on removing cultural barriers and limiting “mental structures” : shifting the mindset from “this is how we’ve always done it” to “this is how we’ll do it better.”

EXAMPLE : The teams at a smoked salmon producer believed their slicing machines had
reached their maximum speed. By adjusting the settings and reengineering the slicing
processes, we significantly increased production throughput —and doubled the EBITDA.

At Profit-Implement, we help companies achieve rapid and lasting gains by placing people at the heart of transformation — unlocking optimal and sustainable levels of Operational Excellence. Our Profit Through People methodology delivers tangible results in record time.

At Profit-Implement, we believe no production savings are truly sustainable unless teams are fully
engaged. That’s why we work side by side with your managers to turn them into true owners of their costs
and performance, through :

We stand by your side all the way, even linking part of our compensation to the achievement of your targets. That’s our way of proving how confident we are in the impact of our approach.

Labor productivity + 15 to 35 %
Raw material yield + 5 to 14 %
Cost of Poor Quality – 20 to 35 %
Customer Service (OTIF) > 98,5 %
Maintenance costs – 15 to 30 %Procurement – 3 to 7 %
Logistics costs – 8 to 15 %
Support functions – 37 %
OEE + 10 to 20 %
Employee engagement > 60 %