Automation without strategy is just expensive busywork. Here's how Australia's leading food manufacturers are cutting through the hype to drive real ROI from AI and intelligent automation.
"We've got automation running, but I'm not sure we're working on the right things."
"How do we know if we're actually ahead of this, or just busy?"
"Everyone's talking about agentic AI. What does that actually mean for a business like ours?"
These are the conversations we're having with food and beverage manufacturers across Australia right now. Not theoretical questions. Real ones, from leaders running serious operations under serious pressure.
And they're good questions. Because the technology has moved fast, and the ambition of what's possible has expanded faster than most operating models have been able to keep up with. In Advanced Manufacturing, 40% of employers say the industry as a whole has a talent pipeline problem, not enough qualified people entering the sector while a further 32% say their own firm's inability to attract talent is getting in the way of transformation goals (WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025).
The organisations pulling ahead aren't the ones with the most tools. They're the ones asking better questions about where to point them.
At Ashling, we've been in the trenches with some of Australia's most recognisable food and packaging brands. Here's what that's taught us.
The most common mistake we see is jumping straight to automation without questioning whether the underlying process deserves to exist in its current form. You end up faster at the wrong thing. In food manufacturing, where every step from procurement to dispatch is tightly connected, that compounds quickly.
The better question to ask first: if we were designing this from scratch today, with everything AI can now do, would it look anything like this?
Arnott's is a strong example of getting the foundations right. When they came to us, previous automation attempts hadn't stuck. The missing ingredient wasn't the technology. It was structure. Ashling brought a governed, sustained approach built on UiPath, connecting automation directly to business outcomes across finance, supply chain, and commercial operations. The result: 75% of manual customer orders now processed digitally, 60+ hours of weekly effort freed up, and average ROI within 10 months.
Detmold, the Adelaide-born global packaging manufacturer operating across 17 countries, took a similar approach after a previous automation solution wasn't delivering. Working with Ashling, they rebuilt on a more robust and sustainable foundation with a clear goal: free people from complex manual processes so they could focus on higher-value work. The outcomes were 70% higher employee productivity, 50% reduction in processing time versus their previous solution, and 12 months to ROI.
Two different businesses. Same underlying pattern: treat automation as a sustained business program, not a tech project.
Across our manufacturing practice, the highest-value opportunities in food and beverage cluster around four areas: supply chain planning and order management, procure-to-pay and invoice processing, plant operations and quality documentation, and customer order management and fulfilment. These are high-volume, rules-based processes that are often still running on manual effort or spreadsheets. They're also where errors are most costly.
What's changing now is the ambition of what's possible. RPA handles the repetitive. Intelligent Document Processing handles unstructured data like certificates of analysis, supplier invoices, and customer orders arriving by email. Agentic AI handles complex, multi-step decisions that previously needed a human in the loop. And predictive maintenance tools are helping manufacturers move from reactive firefighting to planned interventions that protect throughput before something breaks.
The four digital transformation use cases consistently delivering ROI across manufacturing are worth a read if you're working out where to start.
We're proud to be sponsoring and co-hosting a panel at FoodPro Melbourne in July, alongside senior voices from Lactalis, Woolworths, and Detmold. The conversation will dig into what AI and automation transformation actually looks like in food manufacturing, beyond the theory and the vendor slide decks.
If you're attending, come find us. And if you want to talk through what's possible for your organisation before then, let's get something in the diary.