Aquascot Information
Based in Alness, near Inverness, Aquascot has been a dedicated supplier of salmon and trout to Waitrose for more than 20 years and processes an average of 70 tonnes of fish each week.
At its plants at Fyrish and Riverside, the company produces packs of prime fish fillet and a wide range of value-added products for this premium retailer.
Aquascot, one of the UK’s major seafood processors, has selected leading food ERP & MES software provider SI (Systems Integration) to streamline its processes for its new digital transformation project.
“With SI as our digital transformation partner, Aquascot will be more resilient and be able to optimise our production efficiencies.”
Simon Wrench, finance director at Aquascot
Speaking about its vision and why it chose SI, Aquascot’s Finance Director, Simon Wrench said:
“With a legacy system that had been in place for 20 years, we were keen to move to a manufacturing execution system (MES) that could streamline our processes, drive operational efficiencies and enable us to make real-time data-driven decisions.
“It’s all about empowering our business through data transparency; that was our remit.
“With the help of our solutions consultancy, FluidIT, we reviewed several food manufacturing software companies. SI’s sector expertise and modular food software stood out as the best fit for our operational processes.
“Most of the systems reviewed were eliminated from the process as we realised that they were structured to bring different components together and build up to a finished product. However, our processes don’t fit this model; we take the whole fish, break it down into individual products and then start building back up again. It’s a subtle difference.”
As Nigel Cappleman, Business Development Manager at SI explained: “Aquascot had a number of additional business drivers that had to be addressed through its digital transformation project. These drivers included live reporting on yield and mass balance at their primary processing site at Fyrish, together with the added complexity of managing recipes at their value-add Riverside factory.
Live visibility on stock, WIP, Yield and Mass Balance
“Once the system is fully implemented, it will provide Aquascot with live visibility of stock throughout both factories, at multiple WIP stages, live visibility for production on plan vs actual, yield and mass balance reporting with bi-directional traceability, using real-time data and dashboard technology.”
SI’s reporting capability proved to be key in its selection as Aquascot’s partner. As Simon explained: “Any change in yield will have a massive impact across profitability. Until now, we have been reliant on manually tracking fluctuations on spreadsheets. But with SI’s reporting tools we’ll know, every step in the process, how long it’s taking to make a product, what yields are being achieved, and what’s the giveaway.
Real-time costing transparency
“As a finance director, what really appealed to me about the SI System is the real-time standard costing information, and the opportunity to reveal any hidden costs within our production processes. SI’s real-time data transparency, will not only highlight any occasions when we’re not meeting our production standards or when we are out of range of the tolerance levels, but it can also help to maximise our sales opportunities. – Aquascott Finance Director Simon Wrench
“With SI as our digital transformation partner, Aquascot will be more resilient and be able to optimise our production efficiencies.”
“We are extremely proud and excited to become Aquascot’s preferred partner for this project and we are looking forwards to the mutual growth that this will deliver,” summarised Nigel.
“With SI as our digital transformation partner, Aquascot will be more resilient and be able to optimise our production efficiencies.”
Aquascott Finance Director Simon Wrench
