Six insights into resourcing F&B CapEx and engineering maintenance

Capex & Maintenance in F&B Sector - do you have a costed plan?

The principle that ‘every little helps’ applies not just to weekly household shopping, but also to properly managed CapEx and maintenance outlay in Food and Beverage manufacturing!

No company in this sector – besieged by rising costs from raw materials, energy and transport – can afford to be complacent about budgets for capital projects or engineering maintenance. Whether that’s new plant and equipment, expanded infrastructure or machinery deep cleans to stay compliant.

To provide more than just a little help, here are six insights to minimise spending and optimise outcomes.

1. Business intelligence and research

To remain competitive and efficient, all companies in the F&B sector must constantly gather business intelligence to steer their decision-making. As well as conducting research into competitors’ activities and any shifts and changes in the marketplace.

If you have sufficient amounts of the right sort of data, you can also engage in predictive analytics. This can greatly enhance your forward planning and any timescales for major CapEx outlay.

It’s as near as you get to a crystal ball in business. Taking a forward-thinking approach makes it easier to schedule the arrival of new machinery, or major preventative maintenance projects, for example.

It can be more fundamentally advantageous too, enabling you to gauge the likely ROI on new equipment.

2. Create a comprehensive maintenance plan

If you only repair equipment when it breaks, how much is that reactive maintenance really costing your company?

According to one report by AI-driven health management company Senseye, substantial manufacturers lose 323 production hours a year to unplanned downtime caused by machine failures. This equates to them each experiencing millions of pounds in lost revenue.

Being able to forecast replacements, fixes and cleans in advance could mean you have far better control over this situation. Including deploying ‘idle’ staff to complete alternative tasks, and managing orders and the expectations of clients, when scheduled maintenance work is underway.

3. Outsource engineering maintenance tasks

Doing everything in-house can be a false economy. With the best will in the world, even using data for predictive and preventative measures relies on your team paying attention, and completing tasks in a timely manner.

Scheduling regular manufacturing plant inspections and maintenance from external specialists can keep you on track in a more assured way. Then, your reliably serviced and repaired equipment is likely to be more durable and long-lasting.

You may as well get as much service as possible from your machinery if it is still fit for purpose and efficient enough!

4. Budgeting for CapEx and maintenance

Budgeting for Capex & Maintenance in F&B Sector

This is another way you can maintain transparency and control over this aspect of business management, to avoid spending money unnecessarily or unwisely. It’s recommended that budgets for CapEx and maintenance are kept separate from other projected outgoings. Not least as they could have implications that extend well beyond the current financial year.

You certainly need to keep CapEx and OpEx (operational expenditure) separate, to ensure you have sufficient cash flow to pay for vital equipment upgrades when your commercial viability is at stake.

Setting targets and ring-fencing money can avoid costs spiralling out of control, but also a worrying underspend. If you are not investing in the efficiency of your food and beverage plant and IT, are you losing ground to your competition, and putting your operations – and customer relationships – at risk?

5. Well honed approval process

Deciding who has the final say on CapEx and engineering maintenance projects may sound common sense. However, some companies make this a convoluted and unnecessarily complex process, to avoid misspent cash. This can result in decisions taking too long, or being based on out-of-date business intelligence.

It is far better to establish a matrix of appropriate decision-makers, authorised to rubber stamp capital or maintenance expenditure. They can also be armed with criteria to make both intuitive and pre-planned purchases.

Of course, making sure decision-makers shop around and negotiate robustly and regularly is vital too!

6. Improve now, to boost profit

There is one area where most F&B manufacturers need to increase the amount they invest - new or improved ways to streamline and automate their manufacturing processes. There is technology ‘in abundance’ to make your processes more streamlined, compliant and profitable. Bringing in the latest automation systems could well dramatically cut your annual maintenance costs too. (As well as your labour costs!)

A company with a firm grasp of manufacturing automation trends is Engex. We also understand the relative merits and vulnerabilities of older equipment and systems too. That makes us perfectly placed to offer clients audits on their CapEx and maintenance expenditures.

The sort of questions we can answer include, are you about to make purchases you could put off awhile, or are you missing out on equipment that could increase your profitability? Is your engineering maintenance schedule storing up problems for you?

Contact us for forensic and predictive analysis of your capital and maintenance investment, as it’s highly likely we can make your yearly ‘shopping budget’ a great deal more manageable.