Consus developers of intelligent audit systems to merge with Affinitus Group

Consus Fresh Solutions, developers of intelligent audit systems for packhouses, has announced it is to merge with the Affinitus Group. Affinitus has extensive experience throughout the Fresh Produce, Food Service, Agricultural and Warehousing sectors providing cutting edge ERP, CRM, Mobile Devices and Dashboard functionality so there is considerable synergy between the two organisations.
Derek Thompson, co-founder of Consus Fresh Solutions, says:   “It is clear that the merger will yield extremely positive results for everyone and especially smaller grower packer operations. Our software naturally aligns itself with the Affinitus’ offering and we will continue to develop new solutions to complement our existing options and give customers more choice.”

Smaller vegetable, fruit and flower producers still using paper-based systems struggle to meet the ever-increasing requirements of retailers for quality assurance and traceability.  To address this
Thompson was himself a packhouse manager for many years and so understands the pressures on producers: “Each retailer can have different requirements for size or ripeness and varying specifications for shelf-life. Confirming that these requirements are met before produce is dispatched from the packhouse is vital to ensure that the customer accepts the consignment,” he says.
“To respond to these needs, some have doubled their QA teams in recent years to meet the requirements of the BRC Global Standard and those of retailers, Red Tractor and the Soil Association – all of which need similar information presented in different formats.”

Consus has been working with leading producers to develop a paperless system. It automates many of the elements of QA, highlights issues with batches of produce and provides actual detailed costing to determine profitability and cost per pack. This reduces the number of people required for QA and enables faster decisions to be made about fresh produce.
Thompson continues: “Many producers already have good quality systems in place; we saw a need to support them by capturing the information electronically and creating labels with unique barcodes that would allow produce quality and full transactional history to be tracked post-harvest from field to dispatch.
“The Consus system is consistent with BRC and reports can be generated to meet the varying needs of auditors and retailers.”
More about Consus Fresh Solutions.