Global workwear and PPE manufacturer, Portwest, is using PXM company Akeneo’s agentic-first Product Cloud to centralise product data, streamline catalogue production and improve operational efficiency across its global business.

With its range spanning tens of thousands of SKUs across more than 130 countries, the systems supporting Portwest’s product information, including its ERP, databases and asset libraries, were becoming increasingly stretched.

Product data was maintained across several systems, which made keeping translations and information consistent across markets a time-consuming task. Catalogue production remained a largely manual process that could take up to eleven months, while technical datasheets were produced through a long-standing publishing process with limited flexibility to scale.

To address these challenges, Portwest implemented Akeneo PIM as a centralised source of truth for product data, supported by integrations with publishing solution, InBetween. The new platform consolidates technical and marketing information into a single, governed environment, enabling structured data management, automated workflows and scalable content distribution.

Using Akeneo’s reference entities and advanced data modeling capabilities, Portwest can now efficiently manage certifications, compliance attributes and shared technical information across more than 46,000 SKUs. This has significantly reduced duplication, improved data accuracy and enabled batch updates across product families.

Since deployment, catalogue production time has been reduced by five months, while the number of proofing cycles has dropped dramatically.

The transformation has also modernised the creation of technical datasheets. The once rigid and resource-intensive process is now fully automated, enabling accurate, compliant product information to be generated and distributed globally in minutes across 28 languages.

“Portwest is a powerful example of what happens when product data is treated as a strategic asset rather than an operational burden,” Justin Thomas, VP Sales for EMEA North at Akeneo, commented

“By establishing a single, governed source of truth and automating the flow of that data into catalogue production and downstream channels, they have not only accelerated time to market but also unlocked meaningful cost savings and global scalability.”