Infor Nets 7-Year SaaS Deal with Seafood Giant Sealord

New Zealand-June 21, 2022, 02:00 AM

Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage to play crucial role in steering Kiwi success story toward gains in sustainability, cost efficiency and supply chain traceability

Sealord fishing vessels at the dock — photo courtesy of Sealord

NELSON, New Zealand – June 21, 2022 – Infor^®, the industry cloud company, today announced that Sealord, one of the largest seafood companies in the Southern Hemisphere, has selected Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage (F&B) and Infor Supply Chain Planning (SCP) in an initial seven-year, multi-tenant SaaS agreement to enhance productivity, improve forecasting and better measure sustainability.

Sealord chose leading cloud ERP provider Infor 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.

Learn more about Infor CloudSuite Food and Beverage

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 its F&B 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. This results in a close fit solution out of the box. 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, we also appreciate that Infor and Sealord share similar visions for people and culture," Dodd said.

"We needed to address growing business and security risks associated with our legacy systems. Infor will enable us to redesign our core financial systems around current and anticipated business requirements,” Dodd added. “With Infor, we will be able to more easily automate workflows, month-end processes, and provide standardised reports to increase productivity across the business."

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

Sealord fishing vessel — photo courtesy of Sealord

The new solution will also provide comprehensive multi-currency financial consolidation in the cloud ERP suite, so that all Sealord Group companies are reported and managed in 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.

"Infor is delighted to be Sealord’s strategic partner, helping to streamline their business and realise new efficiencies with the innovative and industry-specific functionalities afforded by Infor CloudSuite. We’ve built a very good relationship with the business despite pandemic disruptions. We look forward to helping Sealord meet its strategic goals, so they can focus on their core business while our platform provides the data and seamless tracking they require," Kinchington said.

Sealord workers — photo courtesy of Sealord

About Sealord

With fishing operations in New Zealand, Australia and Mauritius, Sealord is one of the largest seafood companies in the Southern Hemisphere. Encompassing both sustainable deep-sea fishing and finfish aquaculture operations, Sealord employs more than 1,000 people in New Zealand and 240 people overseas. Specialising in fishing, processing, distribution and marketing, Sealord exports 90% of catch in various frozen formats to over 40 countries. Sealord’s people are passionate about fishing, innovation, delicious seafood and the wellbeing of each other and the environment through Sealord’s value-based culture. One of the largest quota holders in New Zealand harvesting sustainable seafood, Sealord also owns Petuna Aquaculture (farmed salmon and ocean trout) and Sealord King Reef (farmed barramundi) in Australia. Established in Nelson, New Zealand, more than 60 years ago, today Sealord is equally owned by Māori through Moana New Zealand, and global seafood company Nippon Suisan Kaisha Ltd. (Nissui). To learn more, please visit www.sealord.com.