The Contract Juice Manufacturing Process Explained

 Synergy Food Group Operations Director, Adrian Hall explains the Contract Juice Manufacturing Process so that you can understand and find the ideal Contract Juice Manufacturing or Private Label Beverage Manufacturing partner for your company 

So turning your conception into a reality, how does that actually look? 

The first step that you’re going to undertake is to just reach out to a number of different contract manufacturers, whether that be via email or phone call and just start bombarding them with as much information as you possibly can about your product. 

You want to be telling them what your product is, how it’s currently made, what kind of volumes you’re currently making and what kind of volumes you’re looking to make when you do start working with this company. 

You want to ask them what are the current challenges that you’re facing as a manufacturer yourself or with another contract manufacturer and talk through how you see those challenges being fixed by working with them. 

You can ask them any other information at that point that’s integral to how your product is made. 

The more information that a contract manufacturer has in those early stages, the better they’re going to be able to tell you what it’s going to cost to make and whether they can actually do it for you. 

So once all this information is being conveyed, the contract manufacturer is really quickly going to be able to tell you whether it’s a product or a service that they’re going to be able to assist you with, whether they have the scope to be able to do what you’re looking for them to do. 

Once all this information has been agreed upon and they say, yes, we can make your product. At that point in time, it’s really important to sign contracts, sign NDAs, before you start handing over any intellectual property, whether that be recipes or ingredients or brand information, who you are currently selling to. You don’t want to give away any information until you’ve signed those documents. 

Once all that paperwork’s been signed, then it’s a matter of really delving, a little bit deeper into understanding, not only what it’s going to cost, but how it’s going to be done. 

With the information of recipes and ingredients and processes, they’ll be able to tell you pretty quickly a rough indication of what it’s going to cost to make that product. 

They’re going to be able to tell you how they would make it and also be able to tell you what their minimum order volumes would be, what their lead times are going to be, what their payment terms are going to be. 

All, this is really, really important in helping you make a decision, whether it’s the right company or not to work with. 

Once you’ve got all that information, I would also be asking them for all of their food safety accreditation. 

You want to be getting their HACCP certification or their SQF, depending on what your requirements are. 

You want to know what kind of rating they got from the food authority. That’s something they should be very happy to share with you. 

You also want to make sure that, if you have any specific requirements around the ingredients that are going to be used in your product, maybe you have a claim on your product that it’s a hundred percent Australian ingredients. You want to make sure that the contract manufacturer that you’re working with can prove and guarantee that every ingredient that goes into that product is exactly what it says on your label. 

Once you’ve agreed on all of those things, and you’ve got all the paperwork, what you want to be doing is making sure that they are able to do a trial run for you. 

Now that might just consist of a couple of bottles or a couple of units of whatever you’re proposing that they make for you. Maybe you want them to do a small trial run, in the hundred to a thousand range but at the end of the day, whatever you decide, you want to make sure that the look feel and taste of your product is consistent with how you would make it yourself or with any other experience you’ve had with a contract manufacturer. And if it’s not, that’s the time where you need to make the tweaks before you start doing large-scale runs or bringing your product to market. 

Now, before progressing to your first orders, it’s really important that you’ve got a really solid contract in place. 

You want to know what their terms and conditions are, and you want to know if something’s to go wrong with a batch or with a process, where does the financial ownership start and where does it finish. 

As a small business, you don’t want to be lumped with having to pay for an issue that was caused by the manufacturer and you also don’t want to be losing stock unnecessarily. 

Having a very clearly defined contract that states all of the worst case scenarios and what are the resolutions to those scenarios will avoid any potential, major issues down the line as your business continues to grow. 

Understand who you need to be communicating with as well. 

It can be really frustrating as a small business owner, trying to get an answer and have nobody respond to your emails or answer your calls. 

A lot of time that can just be fixed by knowing who the right person to go to is to get the answers that you’re looking for. So make sure you’ve got the contact details for their accounts department, their logistics department, their production department. Having all that information at hand before you start doing business with them will help you in the long run as well. 

I’d also recommend asking if you can be there for that first initial run as well. 

You’ve created this product and you’ve got this great concept, and it’s very, very difficult to give that up. It gives you a lot more peace of mind if you can be there for that first production run and in a lot of instances, it’s actually a great benefit for the contract manufacturer having you there as well. 

It helps both parties. Problem-solve finding efficiencies and look at better ways of being able to produce your product as you continue to scale up. 

So that’s the general process flow of what working with a contract manufacturer would actually look like. 

Sometimes you may require more things than that. Other times you don’t require that much detail, but we definitely recommend following those steps in order to guarantee you a great product at the end of the day. 

At the Synergy Food Group, we work really, really closely with each one of the brands that we manufacture for to ensure that they’re getting the best possible service and the best possible products by following that process flow and potentially making adjustments to it where need be as well. 

If you’d love to hear a little bit more about how we can assist you with that, contact Synergy Food Group