Fiber Foods aims to create resilient ecosystems and inclusive African societies
The world of food is changing toward less meat and more plant-based alternatives. Fiber Foods aims to create resilient ecosystems and inclusive African societies by combining international trade and social development.
Dehydrated Jackfruit is a key in this transition. It has a firm meaty bite and absorbs flavors and spices perfectly, "imitating" meat beyond recognition. By using Jackfruit as an ingredient, food companies and chefs can offer their customers a tasty meal, contributing to a more sustainable planet. Drying Jackfruit reduces volume, transportation costs and footprint to the Netherlands by 80%. We sell directly to food companies in European markets and beyond.
Debra Aurich-Koomen
SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT & TRACEABILITY
Business Lab Uganda
"We source our Jackfruit from agroforests in Uganda run by small farmers and their families. We guarantee that they purchase at a fair price. By processing the Jackfruit at regional hubs, we create jobs for women and add value that stays in the Ugandan economy."
The process:
The JackFruit is sourced from about 800 small farmers, belonging to 7 different suppliers of farmers in Uganda, then it is transported to our partner processing hubs who dehydrate the JackFruit. Once dehydrated and packaged, it is shipped to the Netherlands, where food processing companies use the ingredient in meatballs, burgers, curries, stews and soups.
"Where do you find an information management system that allows complete freedom and flexibility in configuration as if they were Lego blocks?"
What we needed:
Early in the process, we came to some key realizations that shaped our needs and defined what we were looking for:
- We realized that in order to continuously improve the quality of our dried JackFruit and meet FSCC certification, we needed full transparency and availability of all critical processing data, streamlined across all processing hubs.
- We needed a system that would be flexible and agile enough to adapt to our rapidly evolving processes and growing operations; like building an airplane as it takes off.
- The key to our customer promise are fair prices and traceability, so we not only needed a quality management and information management system, a demand planning and ordering system, we also needed a traceability tool that could be used by different stakeholders in the supply chain , from suppliers, processors, the team in Uganda and the team in the Netherlands.
- And finally, as a startup, we had a limited budget and certainly not the budget to spend on a custom ERP system with valuable development hours
So, where would such a super agile jack-of-all-trades be found? Where would you find an information management system that allows complete freedom and flexibility in configuration, as if they were Lego blocks? That's where ISO2HANDLE came in head and shoulders for us.
With I2H, we have a tool that checks all the boxes on our checklist above. The team has helped us tremendously in keeping us on track, coming up with ideas for designing a process that allows traceability from farmer to buyer in the Netherlands. We were able to build the system almost all by ourselves, just by designing the processes, building the forms and templates, clicking them together and adding the smart workflows and calculation functionalities. With this we are really extremely happy and our business is running as we wish and we have grip and insight on those points that we find important.
