Olam Cocoa achieves 100% traceability across direct global supply chain

Olam Cocoa has announced that it has achieved 100% traceability of directly sourced cocoa across its global supply chain.

The cocoa bean and ingredients supplier committed to the 100% traceability target five years ago. Olam says that the milestone announced today means that it can now track approximately 12% of the world’s cocoa beans back to an individual farm or community.

The company also claims to be on track to meet other targets established as part of its Cocoa Compass sustainability initiative. These include a commitment to achieving 100% deforestation and child labour monitoring across all managed sustainability programmes worldwide in its direct supply chain by the end of 2020.

In order to achieve 100% traceability, Olam developed an end-to-end system which tracks the cocoa at every stage in the company’s direct supply chain across nine countries.

According to Olam, the system collects data such as farm and community metrics, cocoa bean purchasing and transportation information, as well as details on the facilities where cocoa is processed. As a result, the company claims to be able to offer ‘unprecedented transparency’ for customers.

The system is also said to enable the tailoring of programmes tackling child labour and deforestation to the specific needs of farmers and cocoa-growing communities.

“Cocoa traceability has been a significant challenge for the industry due to the fragmented farming systems and lack of infrastructure in many cocoa-growing areas,” said Gerard Manley, CEO of Olam Cocoa.

“To deliver on our commitments we require an unprecedented level of granular data and on-the-ground expertise to effectively monitor our supply chain and act on issues such as child labour and deforestation.

“A combination of our origination infrastructure and the processes we have developed over the past 25 years combined with the rapid increase in mobile and internet capability, means that our field teams can now collect, transmit and analyse reliable and consistent data in even the most remote locations. This is supported by the latest technology, such as real-time satellite mapping systems that penetrate cloud cover.”

The company’s existing Olam & Farmer Information System (OFIS) tool is said to feed through to Olam’s sustainability insights platform, AtSource.

A dashboard shows where the cocoa beans have come from, as well as the social and environmental impact they have had on their journey from source to manufacturer.

Over 325,000 cocoa farmers across Asia, Africa and South America are reported to be using Olam’s sustainability technology to share their data.