Maxoptra dynamic scheduling and vehicle routing software has proved ‘business critical’ for raw pet food manufacturer Nature's Menu.

With sales of natural pet food growing by nearly 30% last year, the Norfolk-based company has seen a fourfold increase in the size of its delivery fleet since the introduction of the Maxoptra software in 2012.

The company now makes around 150,000 temperature controlled deliveries per annum, and is due to open a new £14 million manufacturing plant later this year to deal with increasing consumer demand and to deliver new innovation to the market.

Chris Warden, operations manager at Nature's Menu, said: “The daily planning of B2B and B2C deliveries would be very difficult without Maxoptra.

"We currently operate around 60 vehicles in the UK, from four different depots, making on average a delivery every minute."

Nature's Menu has been using the Maxoptra cloud based delivery routing and scheduling solution for more than five years, during which time the company has grown exponentially.

Each day orders are automatically exported from the company’s Enterprise software into Maxoptra, where route planning and optimisation features are used to auto-plan around 600 deliveries to retailers and consumers’ home addresses. 

Maxoptra allows for easy customisation of routes to incorporate local knowledge or specific delivery requests, and the approved schedule is then communicated directly to the drivers’ in-cab navigation devices and also back to the central Enterprise system.

Warden added: “Using Maxoptra, our operational costs are as low as they can be, our fleet is utilised to maximum capacity, our drivers are engaged and our customers can be kept informed."