Case Study
Transforming Retail Meat Supply: Coles’ Digital Evolution with Ever.Ag
Building a Smarter Supply Chain
Coles Supermarkets, one of Australia’s largest retailers, manages a vertically integrated meat business that spans beef, lamb, and pork. Each week, planners must align livestock supply, processing capacity, transport constraints, and dynamic retail demand—while maintaining compliance and consistency across a complex national network.
To bring more intelligence and agility into this process, Coles partnered with Ever.Ag, known for combining AI, optimization, and deep agricultural expertise. The goal: to shift from manual planning to intelligent automation that evolves with the business.
The Challenge: Complexity meets Opportunity
For years, Coles’ meat planning relied heavily on spreadsheets, siloed data, and local knowledge from a small team of experts. While effective, the approach made it difficult to scale, constrained innovation, and consumed valuable time that could have been spent on strategy.
Supply chains can be complex, and retailers need solutions that don’t just automate tasks—they elevate decision-making.”
Farid Imtiaz,
Group Product Owner – Meat Systems & Data Integration
Coles
Coles needed to:
Eliminate inefficiencies from repetitive planning tasks
Manage complexity across species, cutting styles, and site constraints
Improve visibility and coordination across departments
Reduce weekly cycle pressure and operational risk tied to manual dependencies
Optimization meets real-world expertise
Built for the complexity of live operations
Rather than deploying a generic planning system, Coles and Ever.Ag co-designed a solution grounded in real-world operations. At its heart is ACB — Automatic Carcass Balancing — powered by Ever.Ag's scAIcloud® platform.
scAIcloud integrates live supply and demand data, automates optimization based on configurable business rules, and generates week-ahead plans that planners can review, stress test, and refine. ACB is not a black box — the rationale behind each recommendation is transparent, explainable, and grounded in Coles' business logic.
The Impact: From Data Decisions
The transformation has reshaped how Coles plans, collaborates, and executes. While specific metrics remain confidential, Coles has already seen:
Significant time savings in weekly plan preparation
Improved consistency and compliance across sites and species
Reduced planning risk and dependency on individual expertise
Greater visibility into tradeoffs and decision impacts across the business
What once relied on intuition and firefighting is now supported by predictive intelligence, enabling a calmer and more resilient weekly rhythm.
We’re constantly refining things together, whether it’s cut rules, export priorities, or seasonal volumes—we listen, adapt, and ACB gets stronger every week.”
Marcela Hegouaburu
Transformation Program Manager & Account Executive Ever.AgWhy Coles Chose Ever.Ag: Partnership Over Platform
Coles didn’t just select a technology vendor—they chose a transformation partner. Ever.Ag’s deep understanding of food and agriculture, combined with their collaborative approach, made them a natural extension of the Coles planning team.
Industry fluency
Hands-on livestock and processing experience informed smarter modeling
Collaborative build
Joint development ensured adoption and alignment
Customer-first mindset
A shared commitment to practical impact, not just software deliverables
The Future: From Volume to Value
With optimization now embedded in daily operations, Coles and Ever.Ag are preparing for the next evolution.
The roadmap includes:
Expanding predictive planning across more proteins and geographies
Embedding ACB within Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
Reduced planning risk and dependency on individual expertise
Greater visibility into tradeoffs and decision impacts across the business