How do you manage a secure and sustainable supply chain in this ever-changing world? This was the big question during two well attended webinars on Thursday 2 December between Fruitnet and Agriplace.
In this webinar Chris White (managing director of Fruitnet) and Nico Broersen (account director at Agriplace) spoke about the recent and upcoming developments in food safety and sustainability.
Furthermore, it was explained how Agriplace Chain can help companies automate the collection and management of compliance information to address these challenges.
Rapidly changing world of compliance
When talking about the recent developments, White said the most important trends that stood out were the increase in food safety, social and sustainability certificates.
Right around the corner, in 2022, Aldi and Lidl are obligeing their suppliers to implement GlobalGAP chain of custody for their entire supply chain. This means that you will not be able to deliver products to Aldi and Lidl if you do not have good insight down to grower level.
Large growth in social certificates
The increase in social certificates is expected to continue in the upcoming years. GRASP certificates are expected to grow by 7.4 per cent, SMETA by 10 per cent (Sedex) and Rainforest Alliance by 15 per cent each year.
Product quality might still be a top priority, but social compliance will become increasingly important. Buyers are starting to focus more on aspects that go beyond the quality of a product.
New biodiversity add-on being launched by GlobalGAP and Lidl
Ami von Beyme, key account and membership manager at GlobalGAP, explained during the webinar the progress that GlobalGAP is making together with stakeholders, but also with retailers like Lidl, by developing a biodiversity add-on with GlobalGAP and putting more emphasis on the importance of other aspects than just quality of a product.
Better insight into all the available data could mean an increase in your competitive advantage as a fresh produce supplier.
Tracking information that you receive on social and sustainability issues will be vital. It will give more insight and help to improve your decision-making process, as White stated. However, this increase in social compliance increases the number of documents and certifications that need to be shared.
From manual to automatic
The growth of compliance requirements is what AgriPlace is tackling. Agriplace is a cloud platform that enables easy compliance for all the actors in the supply chain.
It helps producers obtain certification more easily and buyers of product to automatically collect certificates, lab analyses, declarations, and traceability information.
Agriplace has seen large growth over the last years and now has a network of 90,000 producers and users in 120 countries.
According to Broersen, Agriplace will not only save a lot of time using automatically collected compliance information, but it will also ensure more insight into your whole supply chain.
It is essential to have all compliance information from your supply chain and requirements from your customers in one system to ensure product market fit.
Compliance information always available
Being able to quickly collect and share information across your supply chain is vital, as White mentioned at the beginning of the webinar.
Broersen states that this will not be a problem with Agriplace. Information can be just as easily shared as it is obtained. That is why Agriplace keeps on innovating into new and different ways to make sharing easier.
The new lab analysis module of AgriPlace will enable your own and supplier analyses to automatically be retrieved in one platform. This will enable you to have better insight in risks and opportunities in your supply chain.
The webinar gave insight into the current challenges of food safety and sustainability information. How Agriplace can address these, and how being able to quickly have access to the right information in the right place, could make a huge difference in time savings and customer service for your business.
Have you not yet seen the webinar, or want to rewatch it? Click this link to view the webinar.
About AgriPlace
AgriPlace is a global platform that provides access to the growing amount of information on sustainability and safety in the food sector.
It makes obtaining certification easier for producers and buyers can easily secure food safety and sustainability aspects of suppliers.
The company was founded to make agricultural supply chains more sustainable through digitalisation.
The innovative cloud platform has clients in 16 countries and a network of 90,000 producers.
AgriPlace was developed in cooperation with auditors, cooperatives, traders, retailers, and leading standards bodies.
Find more information at www.agriplace.com.
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