Unlocking Productivity, Profitability, & Sustainability through Farm-Level Visibility
Results
smallholder farmers registered
kilos in cassava, barley, and sorghum bought
transactions captured
Big Picture
Instead of barley as the primary crop for making its locally brewed Eagle Lager beer, Zambian Breweries, a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev, uses cassava and sorghum – important staple crops in many parts of Africa. Despite its prevalence in food and drink, Zambia's cassava and sorghum market relies on the output of smallholder farmers – 30% of whom are women – who live marginally below what’s needed for subsistence.
Zambian Breweries set out on a mission to skill, connect, and financially empower 100% of their farmers by 2025, seeking a robust traceability solution specializing in source-level data capture. Their vision extended to seamlessly connecting all stakeholders in the value chain, from farms to the brewery, ensuring enhanced efficiency and cost-effective supply security. In 2018, they forged a strategic partnership with BanQu, leveraging its blockchain traceability platform to gain data-driven supply chain insights – effectively achieving both operational and sustainability excellence.
Problem
In 2018, Zambian Breweries faced inefficiencies at the farm level that caused roadblocks across their agriculture value chain, ultimately curtailing productivity. These hurdles included:
- Insecurity of supply without lifelong, sustainable farmers that are identified, skilled, and financially empowered.
- No guarantee that local farmers could produce the crop quantity and quality required to meet manufacturing demand.
- Protracted growing seasons with cassava requiring a two-year cultivation period.
- Unpredictable seasonal yield without agronomy tracking over time during crop care.
- Input finance risks without accurate records of loans distributed to farmers and recovered at harvest.
- An unstable cooperative network running on unreliable paper-based records, cash-based transactions, and manual inventory reconciliation.
- Inventory loss during transit from a lack of traceability and accountability among third-party suppliers and transporters.
To maximize profit through smart procurement practices, Zambian Breweries was in need of reliable traceability software that could connect all stakeholders across the value chain – including smallholder farmers. Additionally, they sought access to real-time data and insights on relevant sourcing and ESG metrics for optimizing their value chain.
Enter BanQu
Solution
Sowing a Better Ecuador through Traceability and Transparency
Zambian Breweries joined forces with BanQu to leverage their platform and partnership, ensuring end-to-end traceability across the cassava and sorghum value chain – from farm to brewery. BanQu launched its traceability project with Zambian Breweries in 2018, with BanQu’s implementation team traveling to Zambia to connect with farmers, cooperatives, aggregators, and the brewery on the ground. Over the last six years, BanQu’s platform has registered over 17,000 smallholder farmers, captured over 67,000 transactions, and connected 16 supply chain partners.
BanQu’s completely accessible platform unlocks productivity across Zambian Breweries’ supply chain. As the primary building block of securing Zambian Breweries’ supply, farmers are now integrated into the value chain with their profiles logged on BanQu’s platform. Zambian Breweries can boost their supply by providing contracted farmers registered on BanQu with high-yield, fast-growing cassava varieties – reducing the growing season from two years to eight months. To gain a more predictable seasonal yield, agronomy training records are registered on each farmer’s profile as they occur during crop care. At harvest, BanQu’s platform links transactions between farmers and cooperatives to the volume, quality, and price of crops sold. Furthermore, farmer loans recorded at seed distribution are recovered at sale, reducing input finance risks for Zambian Breweries.
Additionally, BanQu integrates with mobile money providers such as Airtel, MTN, and Zamtel, and banks like Zanaco, for seamless cashless transactions to farmers. Once inventory is confirmed at the micro warehouse, transactions are completed and digital SMS receipts are sent to farmers. With access to their data and six years of transactional history, farmers can qualify for preferential lending at banks to improve their finances and livelihoods. This is essential to building trust and creating a lifelong farmer for Zambian Breweries to secure their supply locally and avoid having to buy on the international market.
At the cooperative level, BanQu digitizes manual operations and provides an accounting system of record for buying points and micro warehouses to run and manage their business. Cooperatives have complete data ownership, with customizable data sharing permissions and roles, and the utmost security of confidential information protected by blockchain technology. Moreover, the platform gives full inventory traceability and transparency for creating a well-managed, dependable cooperative business to ensure the delivery of supply for meeting forecasted demand.
As the crop leaves the micro warehouse for delivery at the Zambian Breweries warehouse, BanQu tracks inventory by truck number, license plate, driver name, and transporter company. This is crucial to reducing inventory loss, as knowing the crop type, the quantity of crop in transit, and the transporter details holds each supplier accountable for their individual contracted services. Furthermore, BanQu facilitates ease of inventory reconciliation and swift inefficiency detection for cost and supply chain optimization.
BanQu’s platform provides complete visibility of Zambian Breweries’ agriculture value chain, with real-time procurement and sustainability reports available at every tier. With this traceability, Zambian Breweries can make data-driven decisions for demand vs forecast management, cost reduction, operational efficiency, and sustainability progress. As a result, Zambian Breweries has tracked purchases of over 81 million kilos of cassava, barley, and sorghum. In alignment with their goal of 100% of their farmers being skilled, connected, and financially empowered, Zambian Breweries has access to a six-year audit trail of farmer training records and impact.
Overall, Zambian Breweries, powered by BanQu, has unlocked productivity, profitability, and sustainability by securing their supply at the farm level.
Benefits
- End-to-end supply chain optimization translating to increased profit.
- A secure and transparent operating system for tracking inventory flows, enhancing supplier efficiency and accountability, and reducing inventory loss.
- Improved predictability of seasonal yield and reduced input finance risks by linking farmer profiles to seed and loan distribution, agronomy training records, and crop trade.
- Secured local supply by building lifelong, sustainable farmers.
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"Without BanQu’s skill, passion, and commitment, we wouldn’t be here today. From implementation to support and beyond, they’ve made our sustainability dreams come true. Their teams have delivered for us every step of the way. Our long-term dreams and goals are huge, but we’re committed to growing our farmers' businesses while we grow. And with BanQu, we know we can get there."
Agricultural Manager at Zambian Breweries
Chris Nicolle