Map products, processes, sites, and regulators
Build a product and site register covering ingredients, allergens, recipes, processing, packaging, storage, shelf life, claims, labels, customers, channels, export activity, and outsourced steps. Identify the legal entity, site, responsible people, licences, registrations, permits, approvals, audits, and regulator for each activity.
FSANZ develops and maintains the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. FSANZ directs food quality, safety, contamination, permit, and licence questions to local food regulatory agencies and lists all eight Australian jurisdictions. Code-setting, enforcement, site licensing, inspections, and local requirements are not one national approval.
Build the food regulatory boundary
| Layer | Seller evidence |
|---|---|
| Food Standards Code | Standards applicable to products, processes, ingredients, allergens, labelling, composition, claims, and food-safety practices. |
| State or territory | Applicable food legislation, regulator, licence or registration, audit, inspection, notification, enforcement, and recall pathway. |
| Local government | Site registration, permits, inspections, premises, waste, trade-waste, planning, and local requirements where applicable. |
| Customer or scheme | Retailer, export, certification, supplier-approval, audit, testing, and product-specific requirements. |
Confirm the current position for every site and product. Do not assume a licence, customer approval, certification, product registration, or export status transfers automatically.
Prove food safety, quality, and traceability
- food-safety programme, hazard controls, monitoring, verification, corrective actions, and management review
- supplier approval, ingredient specifications, certificates, incoming checks, and substitutions
- batch, lot, date, rework, allergen, cleaning, sanitation, pest, environmental, and release records
- laboratory results, shelf-life support, label approval, packaging control, and calibration
- complaints, withdrawals, recalls, regulator contact, audit findings, non-conformance, and closure evidence
Reconcile procedures to actual records. Preserve original evidence and disclose known gaps accurately rather than creating retrospective documents.
Test customers, products, and earnings
Analyse revenue and margin by customer, product, brand, channel, site, contract, and season. Review ranging, supply, private-label, co-manufacturing, distribution, export, rebate, promotion, forecast, quality, recall, termination, assignment, and change-of-control terms.
Retail placement, customer approval, historic orders, food demand, or regulatory requirements do not guarantee future revenue. Buyers will test concentration, delisting risk, forecast accuracy, price recovery, input volatility, service levels, complaints, and customer relationship ownership.
Prepare assets, capacity, working capital, and site evidence
- plant ownership, condition, maintenance, calibration, cleaning, capacity, bottlenecks, downtime, and replacement needs
- premises, leases, landlord rights, utilities, refrigeration, water, drainage, waste, fire, and expansion constraints
- ingredients, packaging, work in progress, finished goods, shelf life, write-offs, customer-owned stock, and cold-chain controls
- debtors, creditors, supplier terms, seasonality, deposits, rebates, foreign exchange, and normal working capital
- safety, chemicals, environmental, trade-waste, incident, insurance, and regulator records
Map people, transition, valuation, and buyer terms
Identify who owns recipes, technical decisions, food safety, quality release, labels, customer approvals, purchasing, production planning, maintenance, audits, complaints, recalls, and regulator relationships. Record qualifications, authority, employment terms, succession, and realistic retention risk.
Buyers may examine maintainable earnings, customer and product concentration, food-safety evidence, approvals, assets, capacity, working capital, people, owner dependence, capital expenditure, and transaction structure. There is no universal food-manufacturing multiple. Use the Australian diligence checklist and employee guide.