By Lauren McNamara, SVP, Business Management, SunOpta
Key takeaways:
- Co-manufacturing is a strategic advantage: It provides expertise, innovation, and supply chain efficiency, allowing brands to focus on marketing and growth while meeting consumer demands for health, transparency, and taste.
- Infrastructure and supply chain investments by co-manufacturers reduce risk: Using shared assets and established networks enables faster product launches and minimizes capital investment for CPG companies.
- Quality, safety, and consumer focus remain paramount: Co-manufacturers help ensure food safety, consistent quality, and supply chain resilience, all critical to delivering products that meet evolving consumer expectations.
The most authentic and compelling brands often rely on co-manufacturing to bring new products to market. Not just for ingredients and private label, co-manufacturing offers expertise, category leadership, and supply chain efficiencies that make sense, especially in today’s market. A true production partner brings better solutions to make manufacturing and processing as easy as possible. Innovation and sustainability are important as part of holistic customer-centric strategy. Most important is the table stakes of cost, quality, and service.
Outsource to the experts
Let’s say a CPG company wants to reduce added sugar in an existing plant-based beverage or explore the possibility of launching an entire new better-for-you fruit snacks line to fulfill consumer demand. The CPG company wants to solve nutrition challenges for individuals looking to indulge, but in a smart way. They don’t have expertise in product development of unsweetened or lightly sweetened varieties. Of course, they don’t want to sacrifice taste or texture; nor do they wish to disrupt customer loyalty or lose market share. In the meantime, their consumers are dedicated label-readers, who not only want to know all the ingredients, but also want to know how much sugar and what are the sources of sugar. Those same consumers are clamoring for stress relief, immune system health, better sleep, increased energy, gut health, and the list goes on!Â
These challenges are best solved in partnership with a co-manufacturer who specializes in not only production, but also bringing products to market in their categories. A co-manufacturer will already have an established supply chain, production equipment and methodology, and will know how to formulate to get great results. A co-man partner can help with sourcing, formulation, regulatory information, and more, allowing a CPG company to really focus on the things they do best to grow their business — brand building, reaching consumers, and increasing distribution.
Now more than ever, co-manufacturing is the low-risk, high-efficiency solution.Â
Infrastructure investments
Co-manufacturing and private label partners grow their network and make investments in infrastructure so that CPG and store brands don’t have to start from scratch. Thorough R&D, updated technology, and optimized output — these are largely their challenges, not yours. CPG companies can sweat the marketing and sales for when the product is ready to launch. In addition, lead times are long, and investments in infrastructure can be risky. Utilizing existing shared assets derisks the investment profile for product launches for all parties, and allows quicker-to-market timelines.Â
Surety of supply
Procurement and sourcing require deep and direct relationships at all levels including not only brokers and processors, but also farmers and growers. Buy optimization, geographic diversity, and long-term supply are a must to navigate market fluctuations, including tariffs. Let the production partner with boots on the ground land the long-term contracts.Â
Food safety and quality
Everyone wants a high-quality and healthful product. Nobody wants a recall. At today’s scale and speed, there isn’t room for food safety or quality issues, which are as expensive for operations as they are for brand reputations. Existing, cross-functional resources and ideally, a national production network allow for localized, scalable production redundancy.  Â
Ultimately, it’s still about the customer and the customer’s customer in this market. No product line will be successful if it’s not what consumers want in terms of availability, price point, or offering.Â
Lauren joined SunOpta in 2017 and leverages over 15 years of experience in brand management and private label manufacturing as the Senior Vice President of Business Management.
After completing her MBA, Lauren joined General Mills as a brand marketer, where she worked across various businesses – from yogurt to tacos to cereal – launching new innovation, collaborating with retailers and eliminating food waste. Lauren gained experience in the private label segment of the industry at Flagstone Foods managing a large snack nuts and trail mix business.
Lauren shares her passion for growing businesses as a mentor for food and beverage entrepreneurs through the MN Cup competition and Techstars Farm to Fork program. In 2022, Lauren was named one of Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal’s 40 under 40 which recognizes young business and community leaders on the rise. In addition, Lauren serves on the board of directors of the Private Label Manufacturers Association as well as the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI), a non-profit dedicated to creating economic value for Minnesota agricultural products.
Lauren earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tufts University and an MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.
