What MPI actually requires
MPI does not prescribe a specific technology. They require outcomes. The core requirements under the Food Act 2014 and associated regulations are:
One-up, one-down traceability. At minimum, you must know where your inputs came from (one step back) and where your outputs went (one step forward). For most food manufacturers, this means linking supplier deliveries to production batches and production batches to customer shipments.
Recall capability. You must be able to identify all affected product within a timeframe appropriate to the risk. For high-risk products (ready-to-eat, chilled, infant formula), MPI expects this rapidly, often within hours depending on the severity. The recall must identify every customer who received affected product and every supplier lot that contributed to it.
Record keeping. Traceability records must be kept for at least four years (seven years for animal products under the Animal Products Act). Records must include lot or batch identification, date of receipt and dispatch, supplier and customer details, and quantities.
Food Control Plans and RMPs. Businesses operating under a Food Control Plan (FCP) or Risk Management Programme (RMP) must demonstrate that their traceability system works. MPI auditors will test it. They pick a finished product and ask you to trace it back to raw materials. Then they pick a raw material and ask you to trace it forward to every finished product it touched.
Where manual traceability breaks down
Spreadsheets and paper records can technically meet MPI requirements. Many NZ food businesses run traceability this way. It works until it does not, and the failures tend to happen at the worst possible time.
The speed problem
When MPI contacts you about a potential contamination issue, they want answers fast. A manual trace requires someone to pull goods received notes, match them to production records, cross-reference batch sheets, then check dispatch documentation for every customer who received product from those batches. For a manufacturer processing 50 batches a week across 200 ingredients from 40 suppliers, this is not a quick exercise. It can take two or three people two or three days to build a complete picture. By that time, affected product may have been consumed, resold, or exported.
The pressure is worse when it is your customer, not MPI, asking the question. A retailer calls to say a consumer reported finding something in the product. They want to know within hours whether to pull the product from shelves or whether it is an isolated incident. If your answer is "we need a few days to trace it," they are pulling the product as a precaution. That is the right call for public safety. But it is also the most expensive outcome for your business, because a precautionary recall covers far more product than a targeted one would.
The accuracy problem
Manual lot number entry is error-prone. A transposed digit in a lot number means a break in the traceability chain. Your production log says you used lot 2024-0847 of milk powder. But the operator wrote 2024-0874. Now your trace misses the real lot and follows the wrong one. During a routine MPI audit, this is embarrassing. During a recall, it is dangerous.
The problem compounds at each stage. If the lot number is wrong at goods receipt, it flows wrong through production and dispatch. By the time you try to trace it, the data tells a story that does not match reality.
The complexity problem at scale
A small bakery producing 10 products from 30 ingredients can manage traceability on paper. A food manufacturer producing 100 products from 200 ingredients, running 50 production batches a week, shipping to 80 customers, and receiving deliveries from 40 suppliers generates thousands of traceability data points every month. Spreadsheets become unmanageable. Cross-referencing is a research project. Finding one specific lot of one specific ingredient across six months of production records takes significant effort even when the data is perfectly maintained, which it rarely is.
The audit preparation burden
Every MPI audit requires you to demonstrate traceability. With manual systems, this means preparation. Someone spends a day or more assembling records, checking for gaps, and rehearsing the trace before the auditor arrives. That preparation time is a hidden cost that compounds with every audit cycle. With an ERP system, the auditor asks for a trace and you run a report. The preparation time drops to minutes.
How ERP traceability works at the business process level
An ERP system built for food manufacturing handles traceability as part of every daily transaction, not as a separate record-keeping exercise that operators need to remember to do.
When ingredients arrive at your site
A delivery arrives from a supplier. The operator records it against the purchase order. At this point, the system captures the supplier lot number, your internal lot number, the quantity, the production date, the expiry date, and any additional data you need: certificate of analysis reference, allergen declarations, country of origin, storage conditions.
This is where Yaveon's lot management extends standard Business Central significantly. Standard BC gives you a lot number and a basic description. Yaveon lets you attach custom attributes to every lot: allergen flags, quality grade, moisture content, fat percentage, whatever your operation tracks. These attributes follow the lot through its entire lifecycle. When a customer calls about a quality issue six months later, you do not just know which lot they received. You know the exact composition of that lot at the point it was received, produced, and shipped.
When lots need quality clearance before use
Not every incoming lot should be immediately available for production. Yaveon's quality assurance module creates inspection orders automatically when you receive goods. The system knows that this particular ingredient category requires a microbial test, or a certificate of analysis check, or a taste panel approval. Until the quality team records the results and releases the lot, it sits in the system as quarantined. Production orders cannot consume it. Warehouse picks will not suggest it.
This matters for traceability because it means every lot that enters production has a documented quality clearance. If a quality issue surfaces later, you can demonstrate that the lot passed inspection at receipt. That is due diligence documentation that your manual system probably does not capture consistently.
During production
When a production order consumes ingredients, the system records exactly which lots were used, in what quantities, at what time. If batch 2024-0847 of your finished product used lots from three different flour suppliers and two different sugar suppliers, every one of those links is recorded automatically as part of the normal production posting process.
Yaveon's manufacturing module uses "manufacturing specifications" which combine the recipe, the routing steps, and the batch-specific data into a single document. As operators complete each step, they confirm the lots consumed. If you use handheld scanners (Yaveon integrates with Tasklet Mobile for barcode scanning), the operator scans the lot barcode during picking and consumption, eliminating manual lot number entry entirely. No transposed digits. No missing records. The traceability chain builds itself as production runs.
In-process quality checks are tied to specific routing operations. At the mixing step, the system prompts for a temperature reading. At the packaging step, it prompts for a seal integrity check. These results are recorded against the production lot automatically. If a reading falls outside tolerance, the lot status changes and the quality team is notified before the product progresses further.
At dispatch
When you ship to a customer, the system records which finished product lots went on which shipment, to which customer, on which date, in which quantities. The delivery documentation carries the lot numbers. If this is an export shipment, the lot data feeds into the export documentation: health certificates, phytosanitary certificates, and whatever the destination market requires.
When a recall happens
This is where the investment pays for itself. You enter the affected supplier lot number. The system returns:
Every internal lot created from that supplier lot at goods receipt
Every production batch that consumed those internal lots
Every finished product lot that resulted from those production batches
Every customer who received those finished product lots
The exact quantities shipped to each customer and the dates of shipment
The quality inspection results for every lot in the chain
The same trace works in reverse. Start from a customer complaint about a specific finished product lot. Trace backward through production to every ingredient lot that contributed to it. Identify whether the issue was a specific supplier lot, a specific production step, or a specific piece of equipment.
This takes minutes. Not days. And the output is a documented, auditable report that MPI will accept, that your insurer will accept, and that your customers will accept.
Beyond compliance: the business value
Traceability that works properly delivers value beyond satisfying MPI auditors.
Quality root cause analysis. When a customer reports a quality issue, traceability lets you identify the cause. Was it a specific ingredient lot? A specific production run? A specific temperature deviation during processing? Without traceability, quality investigations are guesswork. With it, you can pinpoint the issue, determine whether it affects other batches, and fix the root cause.
Waste reduction. Knowing exactly what is in your warehouse, when it expires, and where it came from lets you manage FEFO picking properly. Short-dated stock does not get forgotten at the back of the racking. See our article on FEFO vs FIFO for how this works in detail.
Customer confidence and contract retention. Major NZ retailers and export markets increasingly require documented traceability capability as a condition of supply. Having a system that produces a complete trace report on demand is a competitive advantage in winning and keeping accounts. It moves the conversation from "can you do this" to "here is the proof."
Insurance and liability protection. In a product liability situation, demonstrating robust traceability shows due diligence. It limits your exposure to the specific affected batches rather than requiring a blanket recall of everything you produced that month. The difference between recalling 500 units and recalling 50,000 units is the difference between a manageable incident and a business-threatening one.
The NZ regulatory direction
MPI has progressively increased traceability expectations. The Food Safety Law Reform Act, amendments to the Animal Products Act, and increasing alignment with international standards all point in one direction: more traceability, not less.
Businesses exporting to the EU must already comply with the General Food Law (Regulation 178/2002) which requires full chain traceability. Australian requirements under FSANZ Standard 3.2.2A are tightening. China, Japan, and South Korea all have specific traceability requirements for imported food products.
If your traceability is currently manual and it works for your domestic customers today, it may not work for the export markets you want to sell into tomorrow. Building the system now, before you need it urgently, is significantly cheaper and less disruptive than doing it under pressure when a new customer or a new market requires it.
Equerra implements Dynamics 365 Business Central with Yaveon for NZ food manufacturers, meat processors, and seafood businesses. Full lot traceability, recall management, and MPI compliance built into every implementation. See our food manufacturing ERP page or book a discovery call.
