As Bella & Duke scaled rapidly, maintaining customer satisfaction depended on introducing structure and traceability without slowing momentum or forcing change.
Bella and duke are a pet food manufacturing business located in Dunfermline Scotland. They are one of the largest pet food manufacturer’s in the UK providing healthy raw pet food for Cats and Dogs.
Bella & Duke is a UK-based pet food manufacturer producing raw pet food for cats and dogs. As the business grew quickly, maintaining customer satisfaction depended on having reliable control over raw materials, cold storage, and production flow.
At the point Simportal became involved, Bella & Duke had recently invested in a new 1,000+ pallet cold store to support growth. While this added capacity, it also introduced additional complexity across stock handling, material visibility, and day-to-day operations.
Much of the operation was being managed using Excel spreadsheets and whiteboards. This approach had worked at lower volumes, but it became increasingly difficult to maintain accuracy and consistency as throughput increased and the new cold store came online.
Key challenges included:
Limited visibility of raw materials and finished product across cold storage
Difficulty tracking pallet locations, storage dates, and material availability
Timing and coordination of inbound materials from the supply chain
Inconsistent material assignment on the shop floor, impacting production flow
Customer satisfaction relied on being able to fulfil orders accurately and on time, and confidence in stock data was becoming increasingly important as the business scaled.
Simportal worked closely on site with the Bella & Duke team, starting with structure and discipline before introducing software.
Together, clear and practical manual processes were defined for how materials should be received, stored, moved, and issued from the cold store in day-to-day operations. These processes were agreed with the team and embedded first, ensuring they worked in practice.
Once stock management and traceability were reliable, Simportal introduced scanning and stock control within the cold store. Pallet movements were captured as part of normal work, giving teams a shared, trusted view of material location and availability.
With stock control established, Simportal then worked with Bella & Duke to develop the production processes required to support continued growth. Production workflows were designed around real material availability, linking stock, production activity, and order fulfilment using trusted operational data rather than assumptions.
Traceability was embedded directly into everyday operations, linking materials from receipt through storage and production without adding operational overhead.
• End-to-end traceability embedded into daily operations
• Turnover doubled while maintaining stock accuracy above 99%
Bella & Duke scaled with confidence, improving customer satisfaction while maintaining clear operational control across stock, cold storage, and production as the business grew.