Performance Made Sweeter: Natural Healthcare Products Enterprise Fuels Ambitious Growth

Comvita is a New Zealand-based life sciences manufacturer of premium, natural healthcare products created mainly from honey and other bee-related produce such as pollen and the antibacterial resin propolis. A unique niche player, Comvita is the only manufacturer of medicinal honey in the world.

The company forecasts a profit of NZ $38 million for the current fiscal year, and is growing fast - annual growth is 50 - 60 percent in the Australian market alone. Aiming to be a NZ $100 million company by 2010, Comvita must manage increasingly complex compliance, manufacturing and warehousing requirements.

Comvita executives are ensuring their technology infrastructure is prepared for the growing production and complexity; to achieve all of this, in 2005, Comvita embarked on a systems upgrade with QAD. The company launched a program to migrate from its existing version of QAD software to QAD MFG/PRO eB2.1. At the same time, the company implemented RF Express for MFG/PRO, a radio frequency bar-coding solution supplied by QAD partner Eagle Consulting and Development.

For Comvita, QAD MFG/PRO eB2.1 has improved the quality, reliability and traceability of information and products throughout the manufacturing process. Says operations manager, John Hill, "The traceability is right through, it's great." The ability to forecast purchasing requirements, and meet forecast requirements for materials has also been impressive: "We know who's accessing the system; we can see where our orders are."

Hill believes that Comvita's return on investment in QAD is incalculable, simply because it has made growth possible. "We couldn't be a $38 million company without it. We couldn't aim to be a $100 million company without it," says Hill.

Read additional results Comvita achieved with QAD as well as how the company plans to leverage the unified system to drive future performance: Comvita Case Study