Driving Sustainable Success in NPD: Compleat’s Journey with Point74 & Sustained

How Point74 helped Compleat Food Group take an industry-first approach to embedding sustainability directly into product development — transforming carbon labelling, Scope 3 reporting and environmental decision-making.

Compleat Food Group is a leading UK chilled food manufacturer, producing a diverse portfolio of own-label and branded products for major retailers and foodservice customers. With sustainability high on the agenda and regulatory pressure mounting, Compleat recognised the need to move beyond retrospective reporting and instead embed environmental thinking directly into New Product Development (NPD).

Before implementing Point74’s Environmental Design Module, sustainability analysis was largely manual, time-intensive and costly. Environmental calculations often took months to complete for only a small number of products, limiting visibility, actionability and pace. Critically, key sustainability decisions around ingredients, sourcing and suppliers were frequently made too late in the development process — despite the fact that up to 80% of a product’s environmental impact is determined before production begins.

To address this, Compleat partnered with Point74 and sustainability data specialists Sustained (alongside My Emissions) to take an industry-leading step forward. By implementing Point74’s Environmental Design Module, Compleat integrated real-time environmental impact data directly into its Food Lifecycle Management (FLM) system — embedding Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) into every product specification and automating Scope 3 emissions reporting.

“This is about future-proofing — getting ahead of the game now.”

Will Telford, Chief Technology Officer at Point74

Powered by Sustained’s extensive environmental dataset, the module enables bulk sustainability analysis across multiple products in minutes rather than months. Teams can now benchmark products, quantify environmental trade-offs and identify high-impact ingredients early in development, all within their existing NPD workflows.

For Compleat’s teams, this represents a fundamental shift in how sustainability is approached — no longer a standalone reporting exercise, but a core part of everyday decision-making.

“We’re embedding sustainability into the day-to-day running of Compleat — and therefore into the day-to-day relationship we have with our customers.”

David Moore, Sustainability Director at Compleat Food Group

With sustainability data surfaced alongside cost, margin and compliance information, teams gain a single source of truth. This visibility supports earlier intervention, stronger supplier collaboration and more confident decision-making — whether that’s substituting ingredients, switching suppliers or designing products that balance environmental impact with commercial performance.

From a data perspective, trust and accessibility are critical.

“Environmental impact data should be trustworthy — and surface in a platform that all food industry professionals already use.”

Carl Oliver, CEO of Sustained

Compleat’s collaboration with Point74 and Sustained demonstrates what’s possible when sustainability data becomes practical, actionable and embedded into product development. Their journey is setting a new benchmark for how food manufacturers can design products that are not only market-ready and profitable but demonstrably better for the planet.

How Point74 helped Pilgrim’s UK to achieve industry-leading efficiency.

Overcoming NPD and finance challenges by streamlining processes, fostering innovation and gaining a comprehensive view of margins.

Pilgrim’s Europe are leaders in food development with a diverse portfolio of branded and private-label fresh, prepared and value-added products that meet the needs of a diverse consumer and customer base. Their portfolio of brands includes Richmond, Fridge Raiders, Rollover, Oakhouse & Moy Park among others.

Before Point74, the company faced challenges in New Product Development (NPD) with a slow, siloed process, time-consuming tasks and pressure mounting due to short lead times, all culminating in a cap on creativity. Disparate systems and a lack of predictive tools hindered efficient retail brief matching; reliance on complex Excel spreadsheets impeded the costing process and effective collaboration was limited by disconnected processes and data.

To solve these issues, Pilgrim’s UK implemented Point74’s software to streamline NPD and enhance collaboration, paving the way for their creativity to flourish and to enable delivery of major improvements in how they develop and launch products. A particular focus for the project was an enhanced product costing capability to enable rapid and accurate costs from the concept stage, and in an instant, highlight changes in key information such as EBIT percentages and margins.

All this meant that by the time Waitrose asked for a new range of Asian-inspired dishes, Pilgrim’s not only delivered delicious results in record time but also costed the dishes accurately and profitably, showcasing the system’s versatility and efficiency.

For Pilgrim’s NPD team, success has been evident in an increased development pace and efficient brief matching.

“Point74 has streamlined our development process, providing great efficiencies for the business.”

According to Sam Reader, Innovation & Product Director at Pilgrim’s UK.

Through the use of an innovation-friendly Food Lifecycle Management (FLM) system, with a focus on accountability, focus has shifted. The team now has access to a comprehensive view of margins, increasing costing capacity and scalability. Their integrated system provides visibility and standardises processes, virtually eliminating all version control challenges.

“Point74’s software now provides the whole team with one version of the truth.”

Steph Swinyard, Pilgrim’s Senior NPD & Project Systems Manager

Pilgrim’s UK’s transformative journey with Point74’s software is setting a new standard for efficiency in the industry. Improved visibility, reduced stress and comprehensive outputs have all contributed to overall success in both product development and financial operations. The entire team now uses the system, ensuring consistent and efficient operations across the business.

How culinary force Charlie Bigham’s revolutionised the ready-meal scene with Point74 by seamlessly integrating recipes, packaging and regulations to fuel sustained success.

From their award-winning kitchens, Charlie Bigham’s has been hand-preparing meals in small batches for more than 25 years. The ready-meal brand has shaken up a tired category, bringing restaurant-quality, delicious meals to supermarket shelves. Their passion for consistently producing the highest-quality foods is relentless and is likely one of the reasons for their extraordinary success.  Their desire to constantly strive to improve their recipes is why Point74’s software has found itself at the heart of Charlie Bigham’s team.

With success came expansion, and the struggle to manage recipe and ingredient information, packaging details, and regulatory requirements became increasingly overwhelming. They recognised that the absence of a comprehensive system had led to fragmented processes, with crucial data scattered across departments. From finance to recipe development, collaboration and efficiency were suffering, highlighting the pivotal role integrated solutions play in navigating the complexities of a thriving business.

Charlie Bigham’s found a solution to their growing pains by partnering with Point74. Serving as the central recipe system, Point74’s software houses crucial information, seamlessly connecting ingredients and packaging details to meet regulatory requirements. Its simplicity in use and visibility of changes has enabled the team to develop and manage recipes effectively and efficiently across the business.

“Point74 is our one source of truth. Every business in the food industry is really fast paced. So, you’re constantly having to work with the latest information, whether you’re going through NPD stuff and a new product’s coming along the way, you’re going to want to make sure you’re using the latest ingredient prices or latest, recipe yields. We know all of those bits of data can come from Point74. I pretty much couldn’t do any of my work without Point74”.