Case Study
How anticipation drove the transformation of a leader in the food industry
Published: 9 April 2025
In this article, we share an exciting success story of Imperia with Noel Alimentaria, the first company to trust in our solution. The planning team at Noel Alimentaria shares their challenges in demand management, production, and purchasing, as well as their experience with Imperia since the implementation of Supply Chain Planning.
"Imperia provides you with the functionalities you need, not just those available in the market; a solution that adapts and you pay for what you need." Pau Font, Supply Chain Manager
Success story: Imperia & Noel
Noel Alimentaria, founded in 1940, stands out as a leading company in the meat sector in Spain. With a presence in 60 countries and a strategic focus on Europe, particularly in England as its main export market, and with the current challenge of expanding into the United States, the company has achieved a prominent position in the food industry. Approximately 50% of its sales in terms of volume are made in Spain, thus consolidating its reputation as a trusted and valued brand locally.
What was the need?
Noel Alimentaria faced a challenge: their ERP system lacked suitable modules to efficiently manage demand, production, and purchasing, and in some cases, these modules were not even developed as such. Therefore, the need to centralise data and have a solution that would allow them to consolidate information, parameterise it, and plan with future projections was pressing. They sought training to understand this data and learn to work with it effectively.
Noel chose Imperia for its fit in terms of functionalities, for the relationship between price, implementation time, and competitiveness, and for its ability to integrate with the existing ERP.
It was an internal commitment to work on and invest in the planning department, and externally, to trust in Imperia's software.
The SCP tool replaced a manual process based on spreadsheets, thus enabling better decision-making. more informed and reliable decisions
Current situation between Noel Alimentaria and Imperia
“Being proactive is key in any business, not just in the food industry like Noel. Forecasting demand It allows for the optimisation of production, purchasing, and inventory.” Jordi Parra, Production Technician at Noel Alimentaria
The main challenge in a food company is product obsolescence; an error in stock levels is a direct loss of money and a negative trigger at an environmental level.
Noel Alimentaria faces the need to anticipate the demands of its customers, who wish to place frequent weekly orders and thereby reduce the error rate through regular deliveries. To tackle this challenge, Noel adopts a distribution model that involves maintaining advanced inventories due to the long standard delivery times. This has led the organisation to establish several international warehouses for agile and accurate distribution to its customers.
In this context, Imperia provides them with the ability to anticipate demand with precision. By facilitating stock calculations and projections, it allows for precise adjustments in production and purchasing to meet market needs. This proactive approach has helped Noel Alimentaria meet the service level expected by their end customers, with a 5% improvement in service levels, which in turn has had a positive impact both commercially and interdepartmentally.
"Having an idea of what we are going to sell, of what is going to happen, is to have an aggregated forecast of everything." Pau Font, Supply Chain Manager
Next steps
With the support of Imperia, the Noel team is ready to continue improving delivery times, product shelf life, and inventory levels. At Imperia, we strive to provide our clients with the confidence needed to face any challenges the industry may present.
The active collaboration between Noel Alimentaria and Imperia is based on sessions of mutual cooperation, where perspectives are exchanged and new functionalities are developed in our tool. These interactions not only allow for the continuous customisation of our SCP solution to meet the specific needs of Noel Alimentaria, but also provide us with the opportunity to learn from their experiences, helping us to stay at the forefront of innovation in the supply chain field.
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