Sealord nets Infor for seven-year software deal

Sealord, one of the largest seafood companies in the southern hemisphere, has selected cloud-based platform specialist Infor in an initial seven-year, multi-tenant SaaS agreement to enhance productivity, improve forecasting and measure sustainability.

Infor’s CloudSuite Food & Beverage and Supply Chain Planning will work as a strategic partner to implement an operational cloud-based platform that provides day-one functionality gains as well as continuing to adapt and improve into the future.

As an asset-intensive business, Sealord is also looking to incorporate a stronger and modernised asset management solution to cater to its end-to-end requirements. These include purchase and commissioning, maintenance and asset management, and tracking from both land and sea-based users.

Along with reducing risk and improving efficiencies across the business, Sealord’s focus on promoting positive sustainability practices resulted in the selection of Infor CloudSuite, built specifically for their food and beverage industry, to establish specific carbon and other sustainability measures, such as sea temperature and plastics usage monitoring, to enable and improve reporting, management, and progress on sustainability goals.

Sealord CIO Matthew Dodd said Infor was selected as it was an ideal fit as a strategic partner.

"Infor has incorporated deep industry-specific features that are purpose-built within Infor CloudSuite F&B which align with Sealord’s business processes and operations.

Ultimately, we were looking for a strategic long-term partner to work with, so not only do we value the decades of Infor development that have resulted in strong food-manufacturing capability, but we also appreciate that Infor and Sealord share similar visions for people and culture,” said Dodd.

With Infor, Sealord will also be able to add lead indicators, statistical data, and other non-financial information in business focus areas such as sustainability, market share, employee numbers, customer sentiment, market trends and health and safety data.

The new solution will also provide comprehensive multi-currency financial consolidation within the cloud ERP suite, so that all Sealord Group companies are reported and managed within one system, allowing Sealord to retire costly, standalone consolidation software.

"Standardising on one procurement system will create process efficiencies and reduce costs. It will also improve speed and accuracy, as well as the visibility of planning and forecasting. With Infor’s ERP solution, Sealord will save valuable time through the use of modern workflow, automation and AI tools," Dodd said.

Sealord currently has fishing, aquaculture and land-based factory processing operations in New Zealand and Australia along with sales operations globally. Infor solutions will be adopted across the whole business.

Infor ANZ vice-president and managing director Jarrod Kinchington said the win followed a highly competitive tender.

"We’ve built a very good relationship with the business despite pandemic disruptions, and we look forward to helping Sealord meet its strategic goals, so that they can focus on their core business while our platform provides the data and seamless tracking they require," Kinchington said.