Food manufacturing agreement

About this food manufacturing agreement

This agreement is for you to send your recipes and ideas to a company who will refine the recipe, send samples to you for approval, pass your stringent tests, comply with national or international standards and ultimately make up to your order. It could as easily be used for any heavily regulated product like cosmetics or drinks or sanitary products.

We cannot hope to think up the specification for every possible product. We leave it to you to provide your specification for design, finished product and standards to be achieved along the way.

Key features

• Favours the designer/customer not the manufacturer, so puts you in the driving seat
• Takes you logically through the practical provisions you will need
• Assumes your recipes and other intellectual property is of great value and must be protected.
• Suitable for a contract with foreign supplier

The law in this agreement

There is little statute law to regulate this agreement so it relies on common law: contract, tort, and so on.

Of course, there are regulations affecting your product. We have provided for your manufacturer to comply with specific, exact requirements you have set out in a schedule.

Contents of this food manufacturing agreement

The most important provisions are likely to be:

• Manufacturer’s warranties - who they are, what qualifications they have.
• Scope of work - what exactly is the deal
• Design reviews, product testing and quality assurance
• Setup costs
• Payment for product development
• Delivery
• You can show their plant to potential customers or regulatory bodies
• Design price and payment
• Production price
• Use of sub-contractors
• Option to cancel contract if ownership changes
• Confidential Information, including your intellectual property
• Rules for publicity and / or announcements