Mars is throwing $200 million at its Australian manufacturing network in a bid to jolt flat sales and profits back to life. The confectionery and pet food group is leaning on robots and artificial intelligence to squeeze more efficiency from its plants as margins come under pressure.
Rising diesel prices are hitting hard, turning transport into one of the business’s biggest pain points.
The largest slice of the spending, $113 million, goes into Mars’ Wodonga pet food factory on the Victoria-NSW border. That site will get new production facilities focused on pouched cat food for Whiskas and Dine, two of the company’s key brands in supermarkets.
Around $3 million of the Wodonga budget funds 10 mobile robots, which move materials around the plant and automate repetitive tasks. The upgrades aim to lift throughput without simply adding more labour or floor space.
Management points to stubborn inflation along its supply chain as a critical driver of the investment push. Mars estimates those input costs are already climbing at about 5%, with fuel surcharges on freight doing most of the damage.
Internal forecasts suggest supply chain inflation could edge towards 10% if diesel keeps rising. Robots and AI-backed planning tools are expected to help counter those increases by cutting waste and tightening production schedules.
Global manufacturers are responding to persistent energy and logistics shocks rather than treating them as temporary spikes. By hardwiring automation into its Australian operations, Mars is betting that higher fuel and transport costs are the new baseline.
The investment also suggests that pet food demand remains strong enough to justify heavy capital spending, even as profit growth stalls.
