SAI Platform and Sedex join forces to improve agricultural supply chain data and performance

Brussels – 16 March 2016. The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform – theglobal food value chain initiative for sustainable agriculture and Sedex – the leading non-profit organisation dedicated to improving global supply chains have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to improve the availability of agricultural supply chain data. Joint members of both organisations – including Danone, Friesland Campina, Hero, Mars, Mondelēz, Marks & Spencer and PepsiCo – have voiced their support for the partnership.

The two organisations plan to collaborate closely to enhance their service offerings for their respective members, clients and the wider stakeholder community. The initial stage of the cooperation includes:

Offering the SAI Platform’s Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) questionnaire as an additional module in the Sedex Self-Assessment Questionnaire, which Sedex members use to share their initial supply chain data. This will help members of both Sedex and SAI Platform reduce duplication – as they will only report data in one place – and aid their management of sustainable agriculture.

• Collaboration on new assessment tools, reports and learning resources for the benefit of Sedex and SAI Platform members
• Promotion of existing Sedex and SAI Platform tools and resources to respective members, companies and other stakeholders in the sector
• Possibility for Sedex to contribute into the development of the open source, freely available online IT system for collecting FSA data, which SAI Platform has developed with ITC.

“I am delighted that Sedex and SAI Platform will be collaborating more closely in the future”, commented Jonathan Ivelaw-Chapman, Sedex CEO. “Both organisations were set up by their members in order to support collaboration, reduce duplication of supply chain data and encourage responsible business practices. This partnership is a key demonstration of our core values – leading together to simplify and improve our offerings to both Sedex and SAI Platform members.”

“Since its launch in 2002, SAI Platform’s mission has been to develop sustainable agriculture through a continuous improvement process that allows for easy and flexible use by farmers worldwide,” commented Peter-Erik Ywema, General Manager of SAI Platform. “Our collaboration with Sedex is the next step in this journey, leveraging the complimentary natures of our organisations to better serve our members and push the industry forward. We hope that this MoU will be the start of a long and fruitful relationship.”

In the initial stages of the collaboration, the FSA 2.0 questionnaire will sit alongside Sedex’s existing agricultural SAQ as an optional bolt-on module within the Sedex platform. The organisations will then review where the two questionnaires overlap, and reduce duplication. A parallel work stream will review how the desired outputs of the FSA can be used to add value within the Sedex platform.

In the longer term, both organisations will review how their respective questionnaires can be fully aligned by assessing what members require from a definitive question set. This will support further collaboration and mean that members would no longer need to enter data in multiple systems. As part of this alignment, Sedex will also launch API capability within the Sedex platform. Sedex and SAI Platform will then discuss the opportunities stemming from this capability with ITC, which currently provides the technical platform for capturing FSA information. 

Media Contacts

SAI Platform:  Peter-Erik Ywema | General Manager | +31 (0)65 122 3350 |

peywema@saiplatform.org  | Twitter: @SAIPlatform

Sedex: Charlotte Durrant | Marketing Communications Manager | +44 (0)20 7902 2347 |

charlotte.durrant@sedexglobal.com | Twitter: @SedexCSR 

Notes

About SAI Platform

The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform (www.saiplatform.org) is the global industry initiative helping food and drink companies to source sustainably grown agricultural raw materials and achieve sustainable production.

About Sedex

Sedex (www.sedexglobal.com) is a global non-profit membership organisation making it simpler to do business that’s good for everyone. It is home to the world’s largest collaborative platform for sharing data on supply chains, used by more than 38,000 members in over 150 countries. For over ten years Sedex has been developing technology and partnerships that enable many of the world’s leading brands, and suppliers across the world, to monitor and report on responsible practice. Sedex also convenes the group of auditors who oversee SMETA, the globally-recognised audit procedure used by thousands to check on a broad range of indicators for responsible business.