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Keep Contract Manufacturing Under Control With Our Solutions

Contract manufacturing brings customer-specific requirements, strict quality standards and constant pressure on margins. Aptean’s cloud-native software helps you to manage compliance, traceability and operational performance with greater clarity and control. All backed by deep food and beverage expertise, a growing AppCentral ecosystem and practical AI capabilities.

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AppCentral: The Connected Platform for Contract Food and Beverage Manufacturers

Managing concurrent customer programmes demands co-ordination across every function and that co-ordination depends on your systems working together, not in isolation. AppCentral is Aptean's AI-powered platform—connecting your ERP, OEE, EAM, transportation software and other solutions and embedding AI across each of them. Now, your teams have the shared visibility and automation tools to run multiple customer programmes simultaneously without losing control of any of them.

With AppCentral, you can:

  • Co-ordinate quality, finance and operations teams across concurrent customer runs

  • Respond faster to customer-specific requirements and volume changes

  • Strengthen traceability across customer programmes to reduce compliance risk

  • Maintain control from materials intake through customer-specific packaging and delivery

Testimonials

Hear From Our Food and Beverage Customers Directly

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"Would I recommend Aptean Process Manufacturing OEE to others who are looking to go paperless and gain better control over their processes? Absolutely. It’s caused a change in culture. Certainly, the bells and whistles are nice, but it’s really exciting when you see folks engage with the technology.”

Rob Hodgetts, Director of Operational Technology, Monogram Foods

Read Success Story

Capabilities

The Operational Depth Your Contract Manufacturing Business Demands

Running production for multiple brand owners requires software that understands the commercial, compliance and operational complexity of the model. These purpose-built capabilities are built around those realities, backed by a team with deep food and beverage manufacturing expertise.

Recipe & Formula Consistency

When a brand owner hands you their recipe, they're trusting you to reproduce it exactly—every ingredient, every ratio, every allergen declaration—run after run. Our software stores each client's full product specification in one place, links it directly to the bill of materials and validates every batch against defined inspection values, so deviation gets caught before it becomes a costly rework or a client complaint.

Packaging & Pallet Labelling

Whether you're printing under a brand owner's label or producing your own for client distribution, a single error—a wrong lot number, an off-spec nutritional panel—puts both their brand and your contract at risk. Our solutions lets you configure label templates by client and product, capturing the item data, lot numbers and nutritional values each brand owner requires, then print accurately at line speed via API, so every carton and pallet leaves your facility correctly identified and shelf-ready.

Inventory Management

When you're managing inbound and outbound inventory for multiple brand owners simultaneously, accuracy at every movement matters. Licence plating, SSCC tracking and mobile handheld scanning down to item level mean every receipt, transfer and delivery is accounted for by client, lot and location in real time.

Production Management

No two clients run the same—different specs, different volumes, different timelines—and one delayed order can ripple across your entire schedule. Real-time visibility into work centre and machine centre capacity lets you sequence runs efficiently, balance raw material requirements and ramp up quickly when demand shifts.

Traceability

When you're producing for multiple brand owners, a single traceability gap can trigger a recall that isn't yours to own. Full lot-level visibility across customer-owned materials and variable formulations means you can respond to any trace request in minutes and demonstrate compliance to every brand owner you serve.

Quality Control

Holding product to specifications set by multiple brand owners—each with different tolerance thresholds, packaging requirements and audit expectations—demands more than informal checks. Configurable scoresheets and mandatory quality audits at every production stage ensure every lot leaving your facility meets the right client's standard, not a generic one.

Reporting & Analytics

Spreadsheets can't easily separate performance by client, reconcile customer-owned material consumption or surface the margin data needed to renegotiate a service-level agreement. Purpose-built reporting for contract manufacturing realities means less time pulling numbers and more time acting on them.

Plant Maintenance

Unplanned downtime in contract manufacturing puts service-level agreements at risk and shifts cost pressure directly onto your margins. Proactive maintenance scheduling and equipment performance monitoring keep changeovers on time and breakdowns rare.

Microsoft

Contract Manufacturing ERP Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central

Purpose-built for food and beverage contract manufacturers, this solution extends Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with capabilities for customer-specific production management, formulation control, traceability and quality compliance. Microsoft's secure cloud platform delivers the reliability and modern user experience your operation depends on. Meanwhile, the tailored functionality gives you the visibility and control to deliver accurately across every customer programme.

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Take Control of Your Contract Manufacturing Operation

Running production for multiple brand owners means managing customer-owned inventory, tight service-level agreements and billing complexity that most software wasn't built to handle. Our team knows the realities of your industry firsthand—connect with us directly or request a demo to see how our contract manufacturing software addresses your challenges.