At Moulton Bulb, we believe “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” That’s why we’ve fully embraced digital transformation across every aspect of our operation – from farm to factory floor.
Our in-house software development team has revolutionised the way we work, removing paper-based systems and giving us real-time access to data and analytics. This shift isn't just about going digital – it’s about building a smarter, more agile, and quality-focused business, ready for the future.
More Than ERP – A Fully Integrated Digital Ecosystem.
While most ERP systems handle procurement, production, finance, and dispatch, ours goes further. With deep bespoke development, we’ve extended ERP functionality to give us full control and validation from raw material intake to final delivery. It’s tailored to the complexities of fresh produce production, and it’s made us faster, more accurate, and more responsive.
Online Food Quality Management – Trusted by Auditors
Our bespoke online Food Quality Management System has been a hit with auditors – and it’s easy to see why. Every paper check across our site has been transformed into a digital process: from check weighers and metal detectors, to foreign body checks, knife and scissor counts, production start-up, and engineering sign-offs. This data feeds into automated workflows and robust corrective action protocols, keeping product integrity and compliance front and centre.
Our entire quality manual is built on a web application, allowing an auditor to log in and view every controlled document, reason for change and history on ever document giving full transparency to our systems.
Smart QA That Talks to Our ERP
Our custom-built QA application links directly into our ERP platform. It captures quality data throughout the crop’s life – from stored onion checks, to graded product inspections, WIP, and finished goods across both our packhouse and processing factory.
Through deep ERP integration and advanced data analytics, we can:
Trend quality by grower and customer
Instantly block problematic lots
Trigger automatic corrective workflows
Maintain the highest possible product standards
We’ve even built in optical character recognition (OCR) on Android QA devices, verifying label and pack accuracy in real-time.
Production Insight with Industry 4.0 Technology
We’ve deployed OEE data capture using IoT and image capture tools from Thingtrax, helping us monitor performance on multihead weighers, vertical form fill machines and, for the first time, onion netting machines.
Thanks to high-resolution camera tech, we now track each pack as it’s clipped, bagged, and placed into customer trays – logging defects like miscounts, poor seals or missing labels. Our future vision is to train these systems to automatically detect defects, unlocking even greater productivity and root-cause insight.
Smarter Printing, Seamless Accuracy
Our online print software integrates fully with our ERP. Production Line Leaders simply select the live production order and hit print. Whether it’s box-end, pack, or label – the correct information flows automatically to the right printer. No manual entry. No mistakes. Just accuracy.
A Future Built on Measurable Results
We haven’t just digitised paperwork – we’ve transformed how decisions get made, how quality is upheld, and how fast we can adapt. This is digital transformation built by our team, for our business, and it’s helping us lead the industry with confidence, capability, and complete control.
Training for the Future
Our training software uses AI to surface data from our knowledge base and presents video reels to team members in the style of social media posts.
Alliums are our business. Since 1979 we have been sourcing and packing the finest quality and largest range of onions, garlic and shallots available to the UK market. You won't find an extensive list of exotic vegetables here. That's because we believe that to be the best at what you do, you should stick to what you know, and we certainly know our onions.
Our family values still ring true today, and are a key part of our success. We never compromise on the quality of product or service. When an order is made, we deliver. Don't think, however, that as a family run business, we rest on our traditional heritage. Technology and forward thinking has always been at the forefront of everything we do. Many of the new developments in the market over the years have originated from Moulton. Be it the way in which onions are now dried and cured, or the ways in which you see them presented on the supermarket shelves in form fill packaging. Fresh Garlic, Shallots, Echalion Shallots, Skinned Onions and prepared red onions were all introduced to the UK supermarkets by us.
From humble beginnings and only a few acres of land, our founder, the late Gilbert Oldershaw MBE, built up the farming business before branching out into flower bulb production. Moulton Bulb Co. Ltd was born and has developed into one of the largest onion packers in the UK today. Around 25% of the UK supermarket volume is carefully selected at our site in Moulton
Our own farm generally kicks the UK season off, and after that, we call on a specially selected group of British growers from the length and breadth of the country to supply over 1700 tonnes of onions each week. To compliment our British onion growers, we call upon around 40 international growers from across the globe to supplement supply when the UK crop is not available.
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Process innovation in order to improve quality or drive costs out of the business has always been high on our agenda. We have recently embarked on our biggest investment to date in the form of a state of the art, NIR cup grader which is already revolutionising the quality of our product and the service we can offer to our growers and customers.
