Supply Chain Coverage
We help prevent disruption for retailers with supply chain control and enable them to appeal to eco-conscious consumers as we have the people and programs in place to offer traceability and sustainability.
Control Supply
We invest in integration across the supply chain for consistent high-quality supply.
Manage Sustainability
AtSource gives you end-to-end traceability with ESG metrics that matter.
Food Safety
Strict quality and food safety standards in line with industry norms, across our supply chains. Pre-harvest procedures and protocols and post-harvest care.
Meet Shopper Demands
We are constantly tracking current health trends and consumer behaviors to help you create new products with natural ingredients.
Enrich Your Brand Story
ofi gives you more transparency and consistent quality for a real and complete story to enrich your brand.
Risk Management
In agriculture, you learn to expect the unexpected. Thanks to our global presence and diversified sourcing, we can always adapt so disruption to your supply is minimized.
Farming can be unpredictable. A harvest might be lower than anticipated. Prices can drop or climb dramatically due to over- or undersupply. But, thanks to being spread across the world and sourcing ingredients from multiple origins, at ofi we can manage these risks. Which means you get reliable supply.
Our diversified global presence also helps to insulate us from supply shocks that may disrupt the production of a particular crop in a particular location in any particular year. It allows us to offer certainty of supply and provide the requisite food safety and quality assurance to our customers through adaptive solutions.
This is supported by our team of risk experts who have deep understanding of agricultural commodities and financial instruments trading to help manage the price changes and volatility that can create a difficult operating environment for producers and supply chain participants. We focus on building long-term partnerships with our customers and offering tailored solutions.
Traceability & Provenance
Consumers increasingly want reassurance about where their ingredients come from. Thanks to ofi’s superior traceability, you can give them exactly that.
Providing traceability for agricultural raw materials can be challenging given the complex and fragmented nature of many ingredient supply chains, because many crops tend to be grown by small-scale farmers who sell to an intermediary, who may then sell on to another intermediary, mixing sacks from different sources along the way. With the aim of reducing complexity in our supply chains, we make every effort to work directly with farmers, organising buying stations and local cooperatives.
This way of working not only provides us with the data we need to trace our supply back to the farmer groups we work with, but also provides opportunities to create positive impact by implementing sustainability programmes with customer, government, not for profit and development finance institution partners. With traceability, we can also reduce social and environmental risks such as deforestation and human rights abuses.
We also work closely with large-scale growers such as in California for our onions and garlic. Here, we have long-standing relationships with multi-generational farmers passionate about their crops and stewardship of their land. We provide them with proprietary world-class seeds and our ag operations teams and crop supervisors help support production, harvesting and logistics. Of course, with our own farms and estates such as almonds, black pepper and dairy farms, we offer full traceability and absolute control.
Action includes:
Ensuring all suppliers sign the Supplier Code – which also applies to their suppliers
Training farmers through our sustainability programmes
Providing advice and guidance through our digital applications
ofi’s unique technologies play a vital role in improving traceability:
Olam Direct: the app that lets farmers do business directly with ofi
Olam Farmer Information System (OFIS): putting isolated smallholder farmers on the digital map.
AtSource: our sustainability insights platform which gives you more supply chain transparency than ever before
Improved Quality & Functionality
You expect consistent functionality of ingredients. That’s why we have our own people on the ground at every stage of the supply chain.
Getting better performance from food ingredients starts with the best seeds and seedlings. This is an ongoing mission for our plant scientists and agronomists in their support to farmers. One of our seeds, developed by the Spices team, produces onions with more dry matter—boosting yields and reducing the amount of water, fertiliser and pesticide needed per acre. A great example of the power of plant science.
In our smallholder farmer networks, our sustainability teams provide training on how to get the best quality crops with the lowest environmental impact. For example, with careful use of fertilisers and pesticides, replacing synthetic chemicals with natural alternatives wherever possible.
In addition, our own custom developed planting and harvesting equipment has shown significant reductions in our carbon footprint. We also provide training on how to protect crops post-harvest, providing equipment such as drying mats and tables which help prevent contamination from the soil.
This combination of superior seed, expertise and reduced inputs provides our farmers with well-managed crop risk and yield. All made possible thanks to our global reach and teams working together at every step of the supply chain.
Food Safety & Quality
Making sure our ingredients are delivered to customers without contamination or adulteration is our top priority.
We achieve this by:
Operating highly integrated supply chains working with both large-scale growers and smallholders
Providing training and quality seeds to help farmers reduce the risk of contamination
Maintaining the highest standards of quality and food safety control at our processing plants
Continuously investing in safety, health, quality and sustainability
Putting in place food quality and safety systems including GMP and HACCP
Risk Management
Traceability & Provenance
Improved Quality & Functionality
Food Safety & Quality
Read ofi news
Collaborating with Save the Children to tackle Child Labor
Child labor in cocoa has no one cause. There are often complex and deep-rooted cultural, social, and economic challenges at play.
Farmers cannot always afford to pay for farm labor, so their children help on the farm at weekends or after school. Some parents have no school nearby to send their children to or they cannot provide the documents needed to enroll them, such as birth certificates. Sometimes labor laws are misunderstood or poorly enforced. The complexity of the problem means one intervention will never be enough – it requires a range of long-term actions at the individual, community, and national levels.
Tackling child labor therefore requires collaboration across stakeholder groups – including customers, partners and NGOs. That is why in 2020 we invited Save The Children and its Centre for Child Rights and Business to assess how effectively we combat child labor across four of our key cocoa-growing countries (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria) and to identify areas where we could be doing more.
Save The Children found our programs have real reach and impact. Such as in Cameroon where we trained 6,000 smallholder farmers in child labor sensitization, or in Ghana where we set up protection committees covering 210 communities. It found that our strength lies in our holistic approach, which considers a range of root causes, the link we have made between traceability and child labor monitoring, and the roll-out of our digital Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation (CLMRS) app.
As a result of the study, we intend to build on our existing child labor training programs and measure their impact through before and after assessments. We plan to more strongly link community protection programs with our supply chain operations and create more robust outcome indicators to ensure we are making a real difference.
Ines Kaempfer, CEO of the Centre for Child Rights and Business, Save the Children said:
“We really welcome ofi’s readiness to allow an independent third party to review their existing child labor prevention and remediation programs in order to define their strategy going forward. The transparency demonstrated by ofi in this process is remarkable and proves to what level ofi is committed to finding the best possible strategies to protect children in their supply chains. We are looking forward to continuously supporting ofi in this endeavor."
Find out more about how we’re making the future of cocoa more sustainable.
Nespresso recognizes ofi’s coffee teams in Peru and Colombia as strategic partners
ofi’s coffee businesses in Peru and Colombia have been awarded the title of “Strategic Partner” by Nespresso for their contribution to its successful AAA Sustainable Quality™ Program.
Nespresso’s AAA coffee sourcing program is designed to ensure the continued supply of high-quality coffee while also improving the livelihoods of farmers and protecting the environment. Its name was inspired by the respected AA standard, a hallmark of coffee quality around the world, with each A standing for one of the program’s three aims: quality, sustainability and productivity.
ofi’s field teams support these aims by providing farmers with year-round support and training to produce reliable, sustainable, and traceable coffee.
“Today’s consumers want more than just exceptional quality and flavor; they want to know the coffee they buy carries a positive story for the people and environment it came from. Together with Nespresso, we’ve supported over 2,850 coffee farmers across Peru and Colombia so far to meet this demand for coffee that delights on both the sensory and sustainability front. It’s through partnerships like this that we can create real change at scale for people and planet.” Prashant Jalan, Country head Peru for ofi’s coffee platform.
The program also contributes to ofi’s 2025 sustainability commitments under Coffee LENS. Launched a year ago, the roadmap sets out targets for improving livelihoods, communities and landscapes by 2025 across ofi’s global coffee supply chain.
ofi’s nuts team recognized for industry excellence and innovation at INC Congress
ofi’s nuts team was awarded the Corporate Golden Nut Award, by the International Nut and Dried Fruit
Council (INC) Congress. The Golden Nut Award is the top international recognition of excellence in the nuts industry. The team also received the Innovation Award for Cashew Nut Oil Dipping Sauces & Dressings, which use minimally processed cashew oil to address consumer interest in the plant-based market.
Do you want to make it real?
Speak to ofi about securing reliable sources of high-quality,
traceable food ingredients for your business.
