More and more food businesses are joining the movement for more sustainable procurement and there have been many positive and progressive changes to come out of this. However, in reality, we’ve only just scratched the surface, and there is much more to be done. Right now, with ongoing battles around rising costs, food shortages and supply chain fragility, the pressure for hospitality businesses to strengthen their bottom line, boost reputation and build customer loyalty has perhaps never been greater.
Likewise, climate-savvy consumers are actively buying into ethical brands they trust. As a result, supply chain traceability has moved quickly up the sustainability agenda as more food firms attempt to accurately track the environmental footprint of the many products they source from their suppliers. Being transparent and visible on where ingredients come from means adopting an ethical and eco-led strategy that puts both the quality of food, and the commitment around climate change at its heart. In the quest for greater transparency, more businesses are looking at ways to trace the entire journey of the goods they purchase. This could be related to the country of origin (i.e., where it grows/is cultivated), provenance, labelling and measurement of carbon footprint. Most of this detail can be extracted via effective data capture, but it does require diligence and a focused strategy. The more comprehensive the tracking process is, the more accurate and meaningful the outcome.
For businesses looking to accurately trace ingredients and food items, it is important to first identify what information needs to be captured across the entire supply chain network – but this is only the beginning of the process. The next step is to establish how to collate all of the information obtained and present it in a useable format. Businesses need to understand how to use the data they have captured effectively if they are to use it to their full advantage. Gathering insight into the global supply chain in relation to the environmental impact it has, will help businesses to compare different scenarios as well as demonstrate where globalisation works well, and where it has the opposite effect.
Aggregating data can be challenging of course, for instance, there are several misconceptions related to tracking the provenance of food items. A common assumption is that products originating from far-reaching destinations are usually worse from a climate perspective than buying local. Unfortunately, these assumptions not only limit choice for food businesses in the UK, but they also have an international economic impact on trade. Of course, measuring carbon footprint is far more complicated than simply analysing the number of air miles a product has travelled to reach its destination. Simple approaches may be too reductive, especially in cases where an item is being farmed and shipped on a much wider scale overseas (meaning climate impact might be reduced), as opposed to being farmed and shipped on a smaller scale at a more local destination.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, though. Advances in procurement technology are really starting to support businesses in understanding the related factors around capturing data to better understand traceability. Technology can help establish the length of travel time for delivering a product, the various delivery methods used and energy consumption around storage and refrigeration to keep produce fresh. As technology progresses in the future, we should expect to see food businesses looking to implement traceability from food to fork from a sustainability perspective. To achieve this, they will need technology solutions that can aggregate data confidentially, before reporting on findings. It is only a matter of time before this will eventually become a mandatory requirement for firms, similar to reporting on allergens and nutritional information today.
In supporting food traceability, technology will have a knock-on effect in shaping industry behaviours and helping to create a generation of companies that only produce products under a pre-specified number of carbon figures. Heightened awareness among manufacturers is also likely to change how businesses operate. Right now, the only method of capturing information that is comprehensive enough to track on food items, is to record data at every step in the supply chain. If approached manually, this can be prone to human error, not to mention pose a drain on resource in collating the data. Procurement technology and automation, on the other hand, is an effective way to capture the data. If all relevant information is captured accurately, firms will be able to make more informed decisions and reduce admin and resourcing pressures on their teams in the process.
