Case study: Harbour Harvest Foods

Harbour Harvest Foods is a small New Zealand business that makes bottled sauces using ingredients from local farms. It sells through its website and to 12 independent shops. The business has one production site and keeps only a small stock of bottles and ingredients because storage is expensive. Most of its sales are made during the summer tourist season. The business has enough cash to cover about six weeks of normal costs. A major storm has damaged the road used by its main supplier, so ingredient deliveries may be delayed for three weeks. At the same time, a refrigeration fault has stopped production for five days. The owner can afford either a temporary production space or a larger ingredient order this month, but not both. The website can still take orders, and two local farms have offered to supply some ingredients at a higher price.