A fast-moving industry demands responsive, streamlined performance. Litvin Muir provides the incisive support that helps food and beverage companies manage people, processes, and perform more effectively.

Rapid and transformative change

After a decade of phenomenal growth, the food and beverage sector is the world’s biggest industry, and among the most rapidly changing.

Meeting demand and satisfying the fickle tastes of consumers is the ultimate test for companies contending with other challenges: from low margins, intense competition, and growing regulation – to public disquiet over food waste and plastic packaging, the rise of lab-grown meat and other substitute foods, and increasing energy costs.

Litvin Muir is helping food and beverage companies to adapt and seize opportunities through transformation programs that fully engage their employees, optimize costs, streamline supply chains, and harness the power of digitization and new technologies.

We help food and beverage companies secure their position, accelerate growth, and anticipate future challenges.

Anticipating threats and opportunities

The solutions we provide are tailored to the particular circumstances of each client. But there are common challenges facing companies in the food and beverage industry, and we have proven methods to overcome them. Here are some examples:

Operations performance

Procurement, the supply chain, and operational efficiency are fundamental to the performance of your business as a whole.

We diagnose the true health of these operations using our first-hand experience, benchmarking data and our own RightFunding™ methodology. Our analysis identifies savings opportunities in direct and indirect spend. Outcomes include savings in input costs including energy, and reductions in inventory and working capital requirements, all contributing to higher bottom-line profits.

The aim is always to improve quality and service while optimizing costs. Across the food manufacturing sector, we deliver considerable cost savings for our clients.

Digitization

Growing supply chains, supplier collaboration, customer information and the general digitization of business are generating unprecedented volumes of data. Litvin Muir integrates data science and expert analysis to extract value from that data.

Digital and predictive tools, decision-support technologies (such as AI and machine learning), and process automation can help you exploit big data to increase efficiency.

We also support companies as they build in-house expertise through our data lab management service and guide their selection of technology partners that best meet their needs.

Managing innovation

A strategy for innovation is crucial. We help companies manage their innovation strategies by building a better understanding of their competitive environment. Then we define the innovation levers that will enable the timely launch of products that anticipate and match emerging market trends.

Litvin Muir’s innovation strategy specialists advise on a wide variety of projects, taking full account of regulations and shifting consumer tastes and expectations. Our work ranges from analyzing the impacts of raw material modifications, or reductions in preservatives, to developing new formulations, and improving industrial processes to reduce costs or impacts or improve nutritional quality.

Whether their innovation is constant or sporadic, food and beverage companies often fail to recognize that their efforts to improve products and processes entitle them to tax relief. These rebates not only reduce costs but also help fund ongoing innovation and competitive advantage.

Our R&D tax credit specialists handle hundreds of projects each year, securing millions of dollars in extra funding for our clients. We are experts in assembling robust claims to satisfy the most complex of government R&D schemes all around the world.

In the food and beverage business, allowable spending extends far beyond product development and modification – to bespoke software or improving inventory management, or as we have shown, new washing lines for ingredients or better packaging for food products.

Streamlining tax costs

Tax is a burden on any business. The complexity posed by multiple taxes – from real estate to VAT, environmental and energy to local and sector taxes – makes it harder to manage that burden.

However, as with costs in other areas such as operations or procurement, increasing tax efficiency can unlock savings and drive competitive advantage.

For almost 30 years we have been helping companies reduce their tax costs and increase profitability.

Our tax specialists work within multidisciplinary teams to analyze your position and identify opportunities to reduce liabilities, recover tax and maximize credits. Litvin Muir services range from the recovery of VAT from tax authorities in more than 50 countries, to the optimization of tariffs on imported goods.

Empowering people

In high-performing companies, employees are fully engaged and committed to the goals of the business. People management processes, rewards, and training are fit for this greater purpose. And costs are benchmarked and controlled.

At Litvin Muir, our specialists know how to nurture the technical and soft skills needed to sustain a culture of collaboration and innovation. We provide digital services and training to thousands of employers.

Drawing on this experience and our unique approach, our expert teams ensure that people and procedures are attuned to each other and business strategy.

We invest in your human capital – enhancing commitment, quality of life at work, change management, and employee health and well-being. We are transforming HR management to focus on ROI, digitization, and compliance.