Keychain reels in $30M to make CPG manufacturers more efficient – News

Keychain Group Inc., a startup that helps consumer packaged goods manufacturers boost operational efficiency, has raised $30 million in funding.

Wellington Management and BoxGroup lead the Series B round. The announcement of the investment today comes less than a year after Keychain’s previous raise, which valued it at $260 million. The new round reportedly gave a “good step up” to the company’s valuation.

Keychain provides a platform called KeychainOS that CPG manufacturers use to manage their day-to-day business activities. Many of the platform’s features focus on streamlining the process of sourcing and managing product materials. According to Keychain, the software uses artificial intelligence to automate certain aspects of the workflow.

When a manufacturer sets out to make a new product, the platform can find suppliers that might be capable of delivering the necessary ingredients. Keychain ranks those suppliers based on factors such as price, reliability and merchandise quality. It also tracks fluctuations in those metrics. The platform can, for example, highlight if the a certain component’s price varies based on the time of year.

After identifying a supplier that meets project requirements, manufacturers can use Keychain to place purchase orders. The platform automatically inputs information into form fields to reduce the risk of data entry errors. Additionally, it provides controls for ensuring that purchase orders comply with a company’s internal policies.

A monitoring dashboard enables manufacturers to centrally track the ingredients, finished products and packaging in their warehouses. Keychain can generate an alert when an item is about to run out or expire. According to the company, its platform decides when to send such alerts based on factors such as the amount of time that a supplier would require to prepare a new shipment.

Keychain also promises to ease several related tasks. It provides a file repository for storing the documents that manufacturers must share during food safety audits. For retailers interested in launching new CPG products, Keychain provides a tool that can be used to find manufacturers with the necessary equipment. 

“Manufacturers are being asked to do more with less, and the systems they rely on simply aren’t built for today’s complexity,” said Keychain Chief Executive Officer Oisin Hanrahan (pictured, center, with co-founders Jordan Weitz, Oisin Hanrahan, and Umang Dua.) “Applying AI allows KeychainOS to give manufacturers a smarter, faster way to run their facilities.”

Keychain disclosed on occasion of today’s funding milestone that its platform processes more than $1 billion worth of manufacturing projects per month. The company says that its installed base includes 8 of the top 10 retailers in the U.S. and 7 of the 10 largest CPG brands.

The company will use the funding to establish a presence in more parts of the CPG market. It also plans to release new features for its platform. According to Keychain, the upcoming capabilities will help manufacturers plan production runs and track financial performance metrics. 

Photo: Keychain