How Kraft Heinz Turned Customs from a Cost Centre into a Competitive Advantage

For a company of Kraft Heinz's scale, customs is not a back-office function. It is a direct driver of cost and competitiveness. But the processes in place were not keeping pace with operational demands.

Returned Goods Relief: money left on the table

Kraft Heinz operates a high-frequency, consolidated trade lane between the United Kingdom and Ireland. Consolidated shipments are the norm, often five or more individual consignments per truck. For each shipment, claiming Returned Goods Relief (RGR) required manually locating the relevant export declarations, matching them to import records, and assembling the full documentation trail to prove origin and status.

On average, this took 45 minutes per shipment. For a lane running on a regular cadence, the administrative burden was significant, and it had a direct financial cost. Without a complete, reliable audit trail, some claims were simply not worth pursuing. For the 2023 financial year, this meant leaving duty entitlements unclaimed. The effort required to go back and reconstruct the data outweighed the recovery value.

"We didn't have a tool at that time, and we couldn't claim every single duty because we were lacking all the documentation and data," said Alejandro Lopez Rodriguez, Imports & Exports Analyst at Kraft Heinz.

Inward Processing: manual reconciliation at scale

Kraft Heinz also operates a complex Inward Processing (IP) regime in the Netherlands. The flow runs as follows: third-country raw materials are imported and moved under transit procedure into a customs warehouse. After a holding period of up to three months, the stock is released into the factory for processing. Finished goods are then exported to global markets.

Managing this flow manually meant maintaining parallel records of physical stock movements and customs entries, reconciling Bills of Materials against consumption, and tracking the prior export equivalence process, all without a single system of record. The compliance risk was real, and the reporting overhead was growing.

The broader picture

Underpinning both challenges was the same root problem: data was fragmented across systems, brokers, and manual files. Without a centralised platform connecting imports, exports, declarations, and stock movements, the team could not work proactively. They were reactive by default, chasing documentation instead of managing compliance.

The impact of CAS at Kraft Heinz is measurable across time, cost, and compliance.

The most immediate gain was on the UK–Ireland RGR lane. Processing time per consolidated shipment dropped from approximately 45 minutes to less than 3 minutes, a 93% reduction. The team no longer searches for documentation; they validate data that CAS has already assembled. "We went from 45 minutes per shipment to less than 3 minutes on the UK–Ireland RGR lane, a 93% reduction in processing time," said Alejandro Lopez Rodriguez, Imports & Exports Analyst at Kraft Heinz. "CAS assembles the full documentation trail automatically. All we need to do is validate that the data is correct." At the volumes Kraft Heinz operates, that time saving compounds quickly across the calendar year.

Alongside the time saving came a financial one. Because CAS holds the complete audit trail for every shipment, Kraft Heinz can now submit every RGR claim it is entitled to, without exception. For the 2023 financial year, incomplete data meant some entitlements were left unclaimed. That is no longer the case. "For the first time, we can capture 100% of the duty relief we're entitled to," said Alejandro Lopez Rodriguez, Imports & Exports Analyst at Kraft Heinz. “Moreover, CAS delivered an 85% reduction in costs on the RGR flow. The shift from partial recovery to 100% duty capture combined with the use of customs software represents a direct and recurring saving.”

The removal of the INF3 form was a further efficiency gain that is easy to overlook but significant in practice. By automating origin evidence, CAS eliminated the need for this administrative step entirely, reducing overhead and shortening the relief process on every shipment.

Beyond the RGR flow, bringing the UK market in-house through CAS also delivered substantial savings. By lodging double filing declarations from the EU to the UK with a single, automated message, Kraft Heinz achieved an 84% reduction in costs for the UK customs flow. Managing this in-house through CAS, rather than through external brokers, removed both the cost and the dependency that came with it. "Taking the UK market in-house was a big step," said Alejandro Lopez Rodriguez, Imports & Exports Analyst at Kraft Heinz. "With CAS handling the declarations automatically through a single message, we no longer need to rely on brokers for this flow. The cost reduction of 84% speaks for itself."

On the Inward Processing side, the results are equally tangible. CAS keeps the digital stock balance in continuous sync with physical factory movements, driven by BOM-configured deductions on every export. Manual reconciliation no longer exists as a task. The same applies to prior export equivalence: CAS tracks, calculates, and declares the relevant data automatically, removing a process that previously required both manual effort and broker involvement.

Taken together, the most transformative outcome is audit readiness. "The automatic flow that CAS delivers means the system simulates the physical stock digitally at all times," said Alejandro Lopez Rodriguez, Imports & Exports Analyst at Kraft Heinz. "Every export, every deduction is handled automatically. We have instant audit readiness and 100% data available at any moment." All customs data, declarations, stock movements, origin statements, and export trails, is held in CAS in real time and accessible at any moment.