Partnering With Well-Known Food Giant to Supercharge Profitability and Company Culture

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With consumers seeking lower prices while manufacturers and retailers contend with the rising cost of raw materials, labour and utilities, food suppliers are finding their profit margins under pressure. The Newton team worked side-by-side with the food manufacturer – embedding teams in factories to unlock complexity and improve profitability while embedding a culture of continuous improvement across a network of 20+ sites.

“I regard Newton’s work as the best piece of professional service support that I have seen over my career. It has been absolutely pivotal to our success as a business. Newton has a single-minded focus on making change happen and a combination of great insight that’s rooted in a real understanding of our business. A big thank you to the Newton team for not only making the business successful but also helping me personally succeed.”
Chief Executive Officer

Making a strong business excellent

Our client, a multi-billion-pound fresh food manufacturer operating across multiple categories, has long upheld a “people-first” culture, taking pride in both the quality of its products and the longevity of its relationships with retail partners.

Following a period of rapid growth through acquisitions, the company sought to drive excellence across its core business functions—manufacturing, engineering, procurement, and commercial. Alongside this ambition, there was a critical need to unlock tens of millions of pounds in savings to meet consumer demand for lower prices, all while managing rising costs.

Newton partnered closely with the company over a four-year period, beginning by establishing a clear vision of what operational excellence would look like and continuing through to the implementation and embedding of transformative changes. This collaboration delivered the meaningful impact the organisation needed to thrive in a competitive market.

As a result of our collaboration, the manufacturer achieved its highest-ever levels of operational and financial performance, positioning it to face future challenges with renewed confidence and strength.

Starting with Manufacturing Excellence

Phase 1 of the programme focused on achieving manufacturing excellence. We began by engaging the 5,000-strong workforce, clearly articulating a vision of success for the employees, the business, and its customers. We outlined the critical roles that each team member would play in bringing this vision to life.

A key element of the programme was the implementation of clear performance management processes and the creation of balanced, motivating KPIs. These metrics were carefully designed to flow seamlessly throughout the organisational structure, ensuring that everyone was aligned to common objectives and understood the path to achieving them.

After spending hundreds of hours on the shop floor, closely working with colleagues to understand the complexity of operations and drivers of behaviour, the team identified key opportunities for financial and operational improvement. This deep insight enabled them to design solutions that would deliver meaningful impact.

Our approach went beyond identifying issues—we worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the team, applying Newton’s improvement methodology to solve longstanding challenges and unlock hidden opportunities.

In addition to addressing complex problems, we focused on making it easier for colleagues to consistently make the right decisions. For instance, line workers struggled with the challenge of weighing ingredients both quickly and accurately. We reprogrammed the algorithms behind the yield management system, optimising guidance based on ingredient value and labour intensity, enabling workers to strike the perfect balance.

In total, we implemented over 100 changes, resulting in £38 million in cost savings per annum. Other benefits included a 15% reduction in fresh food waste, a 22% increase in output on a capacity-constrained production platform, and the successful embedding of a culture of manufacturing excellence in the company’s DNA.

“My main hope is I just don’t want to go backward, I don’t want to go back to how we were before”
Assistant Area Manager

Building on successes

Expanding to Engineering, Procurement and Commercial Excellence

Building on the success of the Manufacturing Excellence initiative, the programme expanded to include Engineering, Procurement, and Commercial Excellence, each aimed at strengthening core business functions while driving significant financial savings. Key improvements across these areas included:

Engineering Excellence – £8m savings:

By collaborating with a third-party robotics company, we designed, trialled, and deployed an innovative solution that automated a highly repetitive process found across 17 production lines. This significantly reduced labour costs while improving product consistency.

Procurement Excellence – £12m savings:

Using our proprietary cost-analysis approach, we delivered key savings opportunities. For example, we redefined technical specifications for bought-in cooked proteins, ensuring food safety while preventing over-cooking. This optimisation alone reduced unnecessary yield loss and delivered £1m in savings.

Commercial Excellence – £7m margin growth:

We redesigned the new product development process to prioritise products that either attracted new shoppers to the category, generating incremental revenue, or improved margins when sales transferred from existing products. This approach delivered substantial growth in both sales and margins.

In-House Capability: Recruited, Trained, and Embedded

To ensure sustained performance growth beyond the programme, we partnered with the organisation to establish a dedicated business improvement team across their entire network of 20+ sites. This involved developing tailored role profiles and recruiting 50 business improvement professionals, sourced from both internal and external talent pools, to create a lasting impact.

We know that to have long-term effect, change programmes need buy-in from the entire organisation, and this was central to our approach. Avoiding ‘one-size-fits-all’ tactics, we designed a bespoke boot camp for current and new employees, tailored to the company’s specific challenges. The training and onboarding programme, combined with internal communication initiatives to engage staff at all levels, ensured change was fully embedded and employees had the information and resources they needed to succeed. Staff and new joiners were given well-defined career development pathways, with upskilling opportunities clearly signposted.

Through this close collaboration and long-term approach to transformation, Newton has delivered tangible results and set the company up to navigate a challenging and fast-changing market

Creating a future-ready business

Savings

£65m

Of annualised savings delivered

Emissions

5,000 tonnes

Of CO2e emissions prevented

Manufacturing Excellence

100 changes

Implemented embedding a culture of manufacturing excellence

“I’ve been with the business 16 years and I’ve never seen a change quite like this”
Production Line Leader