Sell surplus
Overproduction and cancelled orders sold discreetly
Flawless goods, full best-before date — and still no buyer. We clear your warehouse without your prices in the core business suffering for it.
The real problem is rarely the goods
Overproduction is the most inconspicuous of all surpluses: the goods are flawless, the best-before date runs long, the specification is met. They just sit there. Triggers are cancelled orders, over-optimistic sales planning, minimum batch sizes in production, postponed launches, or a customer going insolvent.
It is expensive nonetheless: tied-up capital, occupied warehouse space and a best-before date that gets shorter every day. After a few months a planning problem turns into a best-before problem — with markedly worse prices and less room to act.
The real hurdle in selling off, however, is a different one: nobody wants to see their own goods cheap in the market. An uncontrolled sell-off damages the price structure in the core business and the relationship with existing customers. Which is exactly why such stock is left sitting until disposal is all that remains — the most expensive of all the options.
In practice
Typical triggers
If you recognise yourself in one of these, the time for a conversation is now — not in six months:
Cancelled or unaccepted orders
The customer pulls out, the goods are already produced — frequently even customer-labelled and thus unusable in your own sales channel.
Sales forecast missed
Forecast too high, promotion underperformed, weather didn't play along. Particularly common with seasonal and promotional goods, where the sales window closes hard.
Minimum batches and changeover optimisation
The line only produces economically from a certain volume. The overrun is priced in but unsold — and repeats with every changeover.
Delisting, relaunch, recipe change
Packaging design, recipe or article number change; the old stock is no longer regularly marketable although it is flawless.
Customer insolvency
The goods are finished, the buyer no longer exists. Speed matters here, because open receivables are usually in the room at the same time.
Utilisation routes
How we sell off without disturbing your market
Selling off is not a price problem but a channel problem. These are the four routes we use — usually in combination:
- 1
Sale into other regions
Via our Europe-wide network we place goods outside your core market, so they never run into your own sales channel on the shelf.
- 2
Sale into other channels
Processing industry instead of retail, foodservice instead of the supermarket: goods that would create price pressure in the same channel are entirely unproblematic in another.
- 3
De-branding and relabelling
Where necessary, customer-labelled goods are neutralised before they move on. Any link back to your company is removed completely.
- 4
Processing instead of resale
The goods go into another product as an ingredient and disappear from the market as an article of their own. The cleanest route when your brand must not surface under any circumstances.
Pricing
What determines the price
With overproduction you negotiate from a good position — provided you don't wait too long:
- Remaining shelf life of the best-before date — with overproduction usually the only real time pressure
- Whether the goods are neutrally or customer-labelled
- Quantity, uniformity and palletisability
- How far the sales channel is to be restricted — the more channels and regions are excluded, the smaller the circle of buyers
- Storage location and whether the goods are ready for immediate loading
- Whether collection should be immediate or at a later date
What are your goods worth?
Request a free, non-binding price estimate — or call us directly if time is short.
How your core business stays untouched
Tell us from the start which channels, regions or customers are to be excluded. We fix such restrictions contractually and pass them on to the buyer — afterwards there is no repairing it.
We buy directly from you and act as the seller towards the end buyer. Your company name does not appear in the onward sale.
Don't wait until the best-before date gets tight. With overproduction you have the rare luxury of selling from a position of calm — and the price difference between nine months and six weeks of remaining shelf life is considerable.
FAQ
Overproduction & cancellations – frequently asked questions
Other types of surplus
What else we buy
Off-spec goods
Batches outside the agreed specification — analysis values, sensory attributes, particle size, labelling.
Learn moreShort-dated & expired BBD
Goods with a short remaining shelf life or an exceeded best-before date.
Learn moreSide streams & co-products
Press cake, whey, trimmings, pomace, spent grain — continuous streams rather than single batches.
Learn more