Most production software is sold by people who've never held a thermometer probe.
We were.
They sell you "digital transformation."
We sell you a dispatch note that prints in 4 seconds.
And a batch trace that survives a recall.
Three systems.
None of them for the floor.
In our experience, Irish food makers piece their operation together from two or three pieces of software that were never designed for the wet end of a production line. So you weld them together with spreadsheets, sticky notes, and a prayer that nobody calls in sick on a Friday.
Keystone slots between your accounts package and your dispatch door. Production-only. Built for Irish food makers. From €480/month.
The accounts package
Built for ledgers. Bolted to production with Excel. Your QC manager has never logged in once.
The vertical ERP
Designed for one specific corner of food manufacturing. If it fits yours, fine. If not — you're flexing it into shape every quarter.
The big generic ERP
Configured for €40k. Implemented for €80k. Your team still ends up using Excel for the bits that actually matter.
Excel + sticky notes
Works until the auditor wants source-to-shelf in 60 minutes. Then someone is up at 11pm with a USB stick.
Two ways you lose money tonight.
The 11pm phone call.
A retailer flags a batch. You're paging through six spreadsheets and a printed picking list. The QC manager is asleep. The auditor wants source-to-shelf in 60 minutes. Three people are typing into different versions of the same Excel file.
- Hand-written dispatch notes
- Lost batch lineage
- Manual COA assembly
- Reactive QC, not preventive
The 11pm shrug.
One search. Batch number. Forward trace, backward trace, COAs, dispatch records, temperature logs — exported as a single PDF in under four seconds. The auditor goes home. You go to bed.
- 1-click dispatch & COA
- Live batch genealogy
- Auto-generated audit packs
- QC alerts before deviation
Built with
Cashel Blue®.
Keystone wasn't designed in a boardroom. It was built side-by-side with Cashel Farmhouse Cheesemakers in Fethard, Co. Tipperary — a multi-award-winning Irish farmhouse dairy with international distribution, family-run by Sarah and Sergio Furno. Cashel Blue® and Crozier Blue® are registered trademarks of J&L Grubb Ltd; brand name, team photography and operational figures used with the written permission of J&L Grubb Ltd.
It started with a complex Excel-and-macro order plan their QA Manager Louis was building. We rebuilt it from scratch as a purpose-fit operational system around how a real artisan dairy actually runs — variable-weight batches, retailer code mapping, batch traceability, split-batch dispatch, AccountsIQ sync, use-by tracking. Things accounting packages can't do.
Hi, I'm Asif. I've spent 15+ years
fixing other people's IT.
I've spent 15+ years cleaning up other people's IT — for clients who can't afford for things to go wrong. Same playbook every time: cut the friction, harden the ops, then get out of the way.
Keystone exists because I kept watching brilliant Irish food producers run on spreadsheets, paying €40k+ for ERPs that didn't fit, and being told "that's just how it is." You'll deal with me directly. No SDR funnel. No ticket queue. If you want to phone the person who wrote the code, that's me.
Twelve modules.
One spine.
Each module replaces a folder of spreadsheets, a sticky note on the freezer door, or that one person who knows where everything is. They share a single batch register, so trace queries collapse from hours to seconds.
Sales Orders
Quick-entry, repeat-order memory, customer codes auto-mapped to your SKUs.
Production Planner
Weekly grid. Drag jobs. See capacity. No more whiteboard photos in WhatsApp.
Batch Traceability
Forward & backward in one query. Print FSAI-ready audit packs in seconds.
Dispatch & Logistics
CMRs, pallet labels, temperature commitments, customer-specific layouts.
QC & Compliance
Schedule samples, flag deviations, track corrective actions to closure.
Reporting
Live numbers without exports. Margin, yield, dispatch volumes, QC pass-rate.
"We're fine for now."
Until you're not.
Most artisan dairies don't shop for production software when things are calm. They shop for it the week after something breaks. Here are the moments — drawn from real customer conversations — where the spreadsheet stopped working overnight. If any one of these is on your radar inside the next twelve months, you'd rather have Keystone in place before the day, not during it.
You'll care the day Tesco asks for a 60-minute trace.
A retailer compliance team flags a query on a batch from six weeks ago. They want forward + backward trace as a PDF, in your branding, in the next hour. Without Keystone, it's a 4-hour panic. With Keystone, it's one search.
You'll care the day SFPA arrives unannounced.
NIS2 hits your sector. Your retailer sends a compliance demand. SFPA opens a routine inspection. Audit prep that used to take a fortnight is now expected in 48 hours, with a chain-of-custody log.
You'll care the day the dispatch person resigns.
The one person who knows where everything lives in the spreadsheets gives notice. You discover that 60% of the operation lives in their head — pricing rules, customer codes, weight conversions, retailer quirks. Now it has 14 days to live in a system instead.
You'll care the day a second retailer says yes.
You list with a second multiple. They want EDI, ASN files, retailer-specific labels and code mapping. Your existing setup was already creaking at one retailer. At two, it breaks.
You'll care the day you start thinking about exit.
Bord Bia, your accountant, or a buyer wants to see a clean operational system before talking succession. The diligence question "show me your traceability data" is the one that crashes deals built on Excel.
You'll care the day a recall is real.
A supplier flags a contaminated ingredient. You have 6 hours to identify every batch, every dispatch, every customer affected. With spreadsheets, that's a sleepless night and the chance of missing one. With Keystone, it's 30 seconds.
You don't.
That's our job.
Every artisan dairy we've ever talked to says the same thing in week one — "we know we need this, we just can't stop production for two months to do it." Neither could Cashel Blue. So we built around that.
Your team gives us 90 minutes a week across the implementation. We do everything else: data extraction, customer code mapping, dispatch templates, the whole rebuild. You keep dispatching. We come to you.
- ✓Data extractionWe pull your spreadsheets, customer lists, products, codes — without you hand-typing a single row.
- ✓On-site mappingTwo days on your floor. We sit with the dispatch desk, the QC bench, the production planner. We watch how it actually flows.
- ✓ConfigurationTemplates, code mapping, retailer EDI, conversion formulas — all done by us, for you.
- ✓Cut-over supportWe sit beside you for the first three production days post go-live. Mistakes are ours to fix, not yours.
- ✓30-day hand-holdingWhatsApp / Teams / call. Direct line to the people who built it. Not a ticket queue.
What we built it forTo replace four spreadsheets, two whiteboards, and a chronic Sunday-night anxiety with one screen.
Twenty minutes.
No deck.
We won't show slides. You tell us what's broken. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.
Book the call →