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Cashew Coast: Digitally Transforming Africa’s Cashew Industry to Strengthen Traceability

Feature

With the vision of bringing revolutionary change to the way cashew farming is done in Ivory Coast, Cashew Coast aims for quality and efficiency in cashew farming, processing, and distribution. The company is also committed to creating more jobs for women and providing better working conditions and training opportunities for employees and farmers.

Looking to gain a competitive edge in the global market, Cashew Coast embarked on a digital transformation journey and sought modern solutions to help it gain more control over traceability. Cashew Coast looked to digitalize traceability from smallholder farmer plantations to its cashew processing factories and turn data capture into a paperless process.
The goal was to use smartphones to digitally record information on producers, their farms, and their communities at every level of the growing, harvesting, and collection phases.

Integrating Operations Along the Agricultural Value Chain with SAP® Rural Sourcing Management

Before: Challenges and Opportunities

  • Suboptimal quality traceability in the collection of cashews
  • Gaps in supply chain that need to be addressed to optimize farm-to-fork operational processes
  • Limited transparency throughout the cashew production and distribution lifecycle

Why SAP

  • Proven expertise to understand agribusiness challenges and address them using the SAP® Rural Sourcing Management solution, an industry cloud solution
  • Enablement of mobile access for field agents with offline availability using the SAP Rural Sourcing Management solution, supporting data analysis at any time and from any location
  • Collaboration with SAP to support the go-live of the company’s digital transformation vision

After: Value-Driven Results

  • Enhanced farmer payments and funds traceability
  • Improved control over liquidity and budgeting, thanks to real-time data availability company-wide
  • Strengthened traceability with accurate inventory and distribution information, minimizing wastage
  • Optimized supply chain operations with transparency, streamlining cashew collections from 87 villages
  • Leveraged high-performance supply chain analytics, allowing the acquisition, manipulation, and visualization of data from multiple sources
  • Enabled access to a large volume of data in real time for quick analysis, scrutiny, and verification of agricultural products’ origination source
  • Streamlined processes
  • Reinforced customers’ trust in its brand, thanks to the verifiable nature of the organic supply chain

Linking Farm and Logistics Processes for Clear Traceability and Fair Farmer Compensation

Cashew Coast is a leading producer and distributor of quality cashews from Ivory Coast to Europe and the United States and is dedicated to empowering its employees and farmers, in particular, women. As a trusted organic cashew supplier of Ivory Coast origin, Cashew Coast aimed to strengthen the authenticity of its traceability system through digital transformation.
Choosing to digitalize its operations using the SAP® Rural Sourcing Management solution, an industry cloud solution from SAP, Cashew Coast established a single source of data truth, tracing available cashews, sold cashews, and source farms. Linked to inventory information, Cashew Coast can make reliable, data-driven decisions that improve operational efficiency and its leadership position.
Better transparency, traceability, and sustainability data through digitally recorded information on producers now forms the core of the business. By using SAP Rural Sourcing Management, the company has linked farm and logistics processes and gained transparency into the
source of its cashews. Forming a chain of visibility, the solution aids traceability and monitors output improvements from farm to fork. In addition, with the solution integrating farmer payments, intermediaries will no longer be required in payment processing, ensuring farmers receive fair and timely compensation.