Food & Beverage
Demand, quality and trade terms: planned, documented and settled autonomously.
Volatile inputs, retail customers with their own rules, promotions that account for a fifth of revenue, and a quality system that documents everything by hand. Borek builds the pipeline for the food and beverage producer: forecasting and planning, specification and compliance documentation, customer and trade-term processing, invoice and deduction management, above your ERP and your quality system.
The pressure
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€232.7 bn
German food industry revenue, 6,000 companies, 90 % SMEs, with real revenue falling.
BVE 2025
-
~8 %
expected EBIT margin of German consumer-goods manufacturers in 2025, −11 % year on year; cost optimisation is priority No. 1, digitalisation & AI No. 2.
Horváth 2025
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88 %
of food companies name lack of skilled workers the top obstacle to digitalisation.
Bitkom / BVE
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+7 to +13
EBITDA-margin points at stake from digital and AI for a food & beverage producer.
McKinsey 2024
The FAO food price index rose 4.3 % in 2025, with vegetable oils up 17 % and sugar down 17 % in the same year. Planning, pricing and procurement cannot run on last year’s spreadsheet.
Four high-impact use cases
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Demand & production planning
- Forecast error −20 %
- Promotions and seasonality built in
- Planner approves, not calculates
-
Specification & compliance documents
- Specs, allergens, labelling per market
- Certificates tracked per supplier
- Audit file complete before the audit
-
Customer orders & trade terms
- Retail orders and EDI exceptions
- Promotion agreements registered
- Deductions matched to terms
-
Quality & deviation handling
- Complaint structured on arrival
- Deviation report drafted from precedent
- QA decides and releases
Example pipeline
What an automation pipeline looks like in food and beverage.
Anonymised: branded food producer, several plants, SAP + QM + M365
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Demand Forecast
- Today
- Monthly planning from history and gut feeling per plant
- Future
- Forecast ensemble per SKU, plant and promotion; order and production proposals in corridors
- Human gate
- Production plan
- Payback
- 12–18 mo.
-
Specification Generator
- Today
- Product specifications and labelling checked by hand per market
- Future
- Generated from recipe and master data per market and language; gaps flagged
- Human gate
- Release by QA/regulatory
- Payback
- 9–12 mo.
-
Supplier Certificate Register
- Today
- Certificates requested by e-mail before audits
- Future
- Tracked per supplier and material, expiries flagged, requests sent
- Human gate
- Supplier approval
- Payback
- 9–12 mo.
-
Order & EDI Exception Agent
- Today
- EDI errors and retail order exceptions cleared by hand
- Future
- Exceptions classified, corrected within rules, confirmed; residue to sales
- Human gate
- Confirmation outside rules
- Payback
- 3–6 mo.
-
Deduction & Promotion Settlement
- Today
- Retailer deductions reconciled against agreements by hand
- Future
- Matched to registered terms; valid ones posted, invalid ones disputed with evidence
- Human gate
- Dispute
- Payback
- 3–6 mo.
-
Complaint & Deviation Assistant
- Today
- Complaints gathered from mail, lab and ERP; reports written over days
- Future
- Structured, root-cause candidates from precedent, report drafted; QA edits
- Human gate
- Release, recall decision
- Payback
- 6–9 mo.
-
Forecast to plan
Demand → production → procurement
-
Recipe to market
Specification → labelling → certificates
-
Order to cash
EDI exceptions → invoice → deductions
-
People at the gate
Production plan, QA release, dispute
Three pillars
Delivered, not built.
- Running automations, not roadmaps
- Fixed prices you know before you start
- A German project lead you can call
People at the gates.
- AI drafts, checks, orchestrates
- Your people decide
- Three maturity levels, earned by accuracy
Above your systems, not instead of them.
- SAP, AS/400, M365 keep leading
- Read-only connectors, gated write-back
- Foundation built once, paid once
What a pipeline delivers, block by block.
-
Invoice checking
60–90%
processed
-
Customer-service requests
40–70%
answered automatically
-
Article creation
Minutes
instead of days
-
Proposal drafts
Days
instead of weeks
-
Stock
10–20%
lower at the same availability
Benchmarks from Borek pipeline designs, validated per block in discovery against real reference data.
How we work
Start where it makes sense for your balance sheet.
Automation
Project
- Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed date
- Price known before you start
- Ideal for the first automation
Process-as-a-Service
- Rent running processes monthly
- No capex, operation included
- Three months’ notice, any time
Integrated
AI Team
- Your permanent AI department
- Same builders every month, your backlog
- Monthly rate, three months’ notice
Why act now.
Margins of eight percent do not survive manual deduction management and planning by spreadsheet. The producers that run order exceptions, settlements and documentation dark will fund their next promotion from the savings.
Trained, not placed.
Every engineer passes three months of Borek Academy. Every block ships with specification, test protocol and runbook.
Academy
Start with one process.
A 45-minute call. We look at two or three of your processes and tell you honestly whether automation pays. If it does, you get your complete pipeline designed free of charge, and the first automation live in 30 days.