Suggestions for making private packages?

We are considering using FreeBSD to deploy the proprietary software we 
build.

I am interested in using the package system to build and distribute the 
software to our servers. I believe this will help us maintain 
consistency and cleanliness.

Right now I have a few ideas of how to do this:

1. Fork the ports tree, and add a directory for our software. Build as 
usual.
2. Use portshaker to overlay our software onto the ports tree.
3. Use pkg-create directly.

For those of you who write and deploy private software on FreeBSD, what 
do you suggest?

Thanks,
Pat