Food manufacturing · operations & market access
Opushaven works on both sides of the factory gate. Inside it we specify, commission and validate production lines. Outside it we take manufacturers into markets they are not in yet — with the technical credibility their buyer's quality team will ask for, not just an order taken.
For producers who do not need their plant fixed. They need a route in, and someone on the ground who can answer a buyer's technical questions.
The product works and the factory is sound. What is missing is a UK address on the pack, a technical file written the way a British buyer expects it, and someone to open the first accounts.
A region most exporters write off as too small or too far. It is neither, and the distribution to reach it already exists rather than needing to be built.
A line that could run more hours and a willingness to make someone else's brand. The work is finding the client, and proving the plant can deliver to their specification.
Inbound
Representation for overseas manufacturers entering Britain, handled as a technical job rather than a sales one.
Food sold in Great Britain must carry a UK address for the food business operator — if yours is not in the UK, an importer's. Most exporters have not solved it. It is the first thing worth checking.
Outbound
We work with an established distributor in Mauritius whose network already calls on supermarkets, hotels and retail across the island.
Mauritius sits inside SADC and COMESA, so it is a staging point into Southern and East Africa rather than a market of 1.3 million people.
Both ways
Matching a brand that needs something made to a factory that can actually make it — and being able to tell the difference.
Anyone can forward a brochure. The value is in walking a plant and judging whether it will hold the specification on the fiftieth batch, not the first.
Six areas, each one delivered on a working site rather than advised on from outside.
Manual and spreadsheet-driven operations migrated to Sage, with batch-level traceability across production, inventory, invoicing and recall readiness. Process mapping, configuration, SOPs, cutover and training.
Equipment specified and sized, facility layout designed around it, suppliers assessed on technical capability as well as price, and the process validated once it runs — flow and time–temperature limits, CIP, packaging control points, distribution temperature.
Bank-grade business cases for new production capability. Market, technical, regulatory and financial, with a five-year model and a downside case that holds up under a credit team's questions.
Concept through recipe and specification, shelf-life protocol, regulatory and labelling pack, to first commercial run.
Where the margin is, whether the demand is real, and how to reach it. Primary and syndicated research, channel strategy, buyer pitch packs.
Working alongside your technical team rather than in place of it: documentation reviewed against the standard, validation evidence checked, traceability and recall readiness tested, and preparation for BRCGS, SALSA and retailer audits. We have been through certification from the operations side and know what an auditor actually asks for.
Not every problem needs a full programme. Each of these is self-contained and ends in something written.
Your whole document set read against itself and against the standard — contradictions, gaps, out-of-date references and missing validation evidence, listed and prioritised for your team to close.
Your documentation run against the clauses before the auditor runs it. You get the findings list first, with time to close it.
BRCGS asks for the minimum documents needed for safe practice. Most plants have accumulated the opposite. Duplication and contradiction found and removed.
Years of non-conformances, complaints and deviations read for the patterns nobody has time to look for. The data already exists.
Raw material and equipment suppliers identified, technically assessed and shortlisted, with the specification work behind the comparison.
UK and EU compliance, allergen declaration, Natasha's Law, country of origin and nutritional panels, checked against what is actually on the pack.
Incoming certificates of analysis checked against agreed specifications at volume, with the exceptions flagged rather than the whole pile re-read.
Cost, yield, wastage and efficiency reporting that tells management where product is actually being lost, rather than where it is assumed to be.
No retainer you cannot get out of, and no open-ended day-rate drift.
Five working days on site and in your documentation, at a fixed fee. It ends in a written recommendation. If the right answer is that you do not need us, the recommendation says so.
The recommendation becomes a proposal with a defined deliverable, a fee and a finish date. You decide whether to run it, and nothing starts before that is signed.
The work is done with your team rather than around it, and what we build is handed over in a form they can keep running after we leave.
Get in touch
A line that will not hold its temperature, an audit in eight weeks, a product that works in the kitchen and not in the plant, or a market you cannot get into. Those are the conversations worth having first.