Grain & Bake is building manufacturing capability in Australia to support brands with scalable production, quality and supply chain alignment. Dae Hong writes.
Founded in 2017, Grain & Bake is a family-owned manufacturer in toasted muesli, granola, and snacks like bars and puffs. Joining Food & Beverage Industry News, founder and CEO Narelle Plapp shared her journey to the health foods sector.
Plapp’s entry into food manufacturing was preceded by a career in health food retail and nutrition. She initially considered careers in either naturopathy or interior design before pursuing health science.
“When I was originally at high school, I either wanted to be a naturopath or an interior designer,” she said.
Taking on the path as a naturopath, she pursued a degree in science, eventually moving into health food stores.
“I had two health food stores when I was the ripe old age of 22,” said Plapp. “I went into my brand and then to manufacturing.”
From retail customer demand for her brand, Food for Health, through to production realities, this progression gave her experience across the value chain, shaping her approach to building Grain & Bake. Part of this experience derived from a manufacturing gap in the market.
“I saw firsthand how challenging it can be for food brands to find the right manufacturing partner,” said Plapp.
According to her, this did not only include a manufacturer who knew how to produce high-quality products, but also maintaining consistency, speed to market, and scaling production. Plapp highlighted the gap between manufacturers and brand owners when it came to understanding commercial pressures faced by fast-moving consumer goods companies.
Understanding this, Plapp’s experience shaped the direction of Grain & Bake, a company built to bridge the gap between brand creation and scalable production. From that transition, the business was born with a focus on manufacturing capability and brand partnership.
“Grain & Bake certainly filled that gap,” said Plapp. “Our mission here is to exist to support brands to market.”
Grain & Bake
Today, Grain & Bake operates as a player in the Australian breakfast cereal and snack bar category, with Plapp noting the business is one of the larger manufacturers in the sector.
Made at a purpose-built 10,000 square metre production site in Melbourne, which Plapp calls “the big shed”, the business employs a team of more than 80 full-time staff on a 24-hour, five-day-a-week operation.
The company’s model is built around combining operational scale with commercial empathy, ensuring production aligns with brand expectations. That focus has driven the development of the facility, designed for toasted cereals and snack bar production while maintaining strict quality and traceability systems.
For example, the site is AA grade BRCGS (Brand Reputation through Compliance Global Standards), which is the highest level of certification awarded for food safety and quality management.
“I’m passionate about building teams in a business that combines really good manufacturing capability with partnerships to brands and making sure that we provide good quality products,” added Plapp.
The site includes three core production lines and has been developed to support production flow, traceability and quality control across all operations, oven, snack bar line, and packing line.
The facility includes a 30-metre impingement oven, where baking occurs on a solid steel belt, which gives a homemade baked style finished granola or muesli. Alongside this is a snack bar line, capable of manufacturing 100 million bars including, muesli bars, protein bars and gluten free bars.
“We have the capability to do roughly 6,000 tonnes per annum in toasted cereal,” said Plapp. “Our bar line, we have the capacity to do 100 million snack bars annually.”
When she was running her own brand, Plapp said there were not enough toasting ovens in Australia. Therefore, the bar production capability was a natural extension of the company’s cereal manufacturing base.
“The bar line was always my next growth trajectory project,” said Plapp.
For packaging of products, the company has employed vertical form fill seal machines that can pack muesli and granola sizes from single-serve sachets to bulk bags up to 1.8 kilograms.
Translating trends amidst challenges
Recently returning from a trade show in California, Plapp and her team were able to gain insights into trends, with one of them being the rise of functional nutrition.
“Consumers are looking for products that deliver health benefits,” she said.
Fibre as well as functional ingredients like creatine monohydrate appear as a growing interest in the market. Creatine, she explained, is increasingly being incorporated into food formats due to its association with recovery and muscle performance.
At the same time, convenience remains a driver of demand, particularly in cereal and snack formats designed for on-the-go consumption. From a manufacturing perspective, Grain & Bake’s role is to translate these trends into scalable product solutions for brands.
“Our role in this process is to help brands bring those ideas to life with the information that we find from our own research,” said Plapp.
However, like many manufacturers, the business is exposed to global supply chain volatility.
“We’re in manufacturing, there are challenges every day,” she said.
As many raw materials are imported into Australia, Plapp identifies supply chain reliability as one of the most ongoing challenges, as a business that does not have raw materials cannot produce.
To navigate this challenge, she highlighted the importance of procurement planning and risk mitigation across multiple supplier tiers. With a secure supply chain and procurement team, Grain & Bake aims to provide confidence to customers that it can supply raw materials.
With global conflicts, rising freight costs and fuel prices also having a direct impact on manufacturing inputs and operational efficiency, she remained focused.
“When there are supply chain issues, supply instability and price rises will inevitably occur,” said Plapp. “Whilst there is uncertainty, we continued to stay focused on our strong supplier relationships so we can continue to deliver consistent quality products to our customers.”
Quality intertwined with values
Quality remains central to Grain & Bake’s operations and decision making. Plapp described it as the organisation’s core value, supported by a wider framework of innovation, customer focus, integrity, teamwork and safety. She emphasised that quality extends beyond product outcomes to include people and processes.
“I couldn’t do this business without the rest of my team,” said Plapp. “We show up for each other and when one of us wins, we all win.”
The company also prioritises learning and innovation, with dedicated teams focused on research and new product development.
Looking ahead, Grain & Bake continues to operate with more spare manufacturing capacity available for future expansion.
“I feel like I’m just getting started with Grain and Bake,” she said. “We currently have 60 per cent of footprint that we use, and we still have 40 per cent of footprint that we can grow.”
Future opportunities include additional production lines and new product categories such as pretzels, alongside continued reinvestment in infrastructure. At this stage, growth is focused on supporting existing brand partners while expanding production capability.
When asked to give one word of advice to the industry, Plapp highlighted the Australian manufacturing landscape, noting that Australian manufacturing plays a role in the national economy and should be valued alongside imported alternatives.
“Support Australian manufacturing,” she said. “Small businesses and Australian manufacturing are the heartbeat of our country.”
As Grain & Bake continues to scale, its strategy remains grounded in capability building, customer partnership and operational discipline. For Plapp, the business is still in its growth phase with ongoing investment in innovation and production systems.
“I am very proud to be a woman in manufacturing,” she said. “It’s a rare commodity to see a woman running a manufacturing site, but I’m proud that I get to work with exciting brands. My customers and my people really drive my ongoing passion to grow this business even further.”
