Rich Harvest Agricultural Product Limited
Fertilising the Soil for Supply Chain Management
"Being an agricultural provider, global standards play an important role for us to build trust in the markets and assist us to comply with government regulation. We expect global standards can continue to add values to our supply chain and build modernized model for our industry."
-- Mr. Kenneth Chan, CEO, Rich Harvest Agricultural Product
Challenges
With 8 farmlands in China, Rich Harvest Agricultural Product supplies more than 30 tonnes of a multitude of agricultural products to restaurants, supermarkets and hotels in Hong Kong and Macau every day. Fresh vegetables are harvested in Guizhou and imported to both locations through Guangzhou distribution centre.
In meeting the exacting demands of the health-conscious consumers, the company has attained recognition by Guizhou Agricultural Bureau as qualified agricultural products provider. They took one step further in registering their products to Guizhou Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Tracking System, and furthermore were determined to maintain an end-to-end traceability system to strengthen consumer confidence.
However, the system set-up turned out to be immensely challenging because along the supply chain, there involves exhaustive and complicated processes, such as cross-border transportation and last mile delivery, and multiple stakeholders from farmers to logistics service providers, and governments to retailers. In addition, the product data requirements and procedures also caused much headache to the company.
Solutions
GS1 Hong Kong’s Supply Chain Management Professional Service (SCMPS) Team was called to evaluate the performance of Rich Harvest supply chain. The team visited the farmland in Guizhou, all the way down to its Guangzhou distribution centre, in order to achieve a full picture of the current roles, business steps and performances of all relevant parties.
The team subsequently mapped out a comprehensive implementation blueprint that aimed to realise an efficient and robust end-to-end traceability process. GS1 HK’s affordable technologies, like barcode and RFID, were recommended to assure the product data are captured properly throughout the supply chain. Also suggested were Global Data Standards (GDS) and ezTRACK platform to ensure compliance with government requirements on food products and interoperability among the many stakeholders. With these solutions in place, Rich Harvest’s clients need only a simple scan of the products and the whereabouts information and other health-related reports can be immediately displayed, which helps boost their trust.
Since opening its first retail store in Hong Kong, Rich Harvest has been planning to launch the traceability extension to consumers through Serialized Global Trade Item Number (SGTIN) in 2019, ensuring food safety and promoting brand building with this unique feature.
Benefits
Since employing SCMPS’ advice on supply chain management, Rich Harvest is able to enhance their operations:
|
About the Company
Founded in 2006, Rich Harvest Agricultural Product Limited’s business covers agriculture farming, processing, trading and logistics, delivering high-quality and safe agricultural products to Chinese customers and exports to Hong Kong and Macau. Rich Harvest currently owns 8 vegetable farms and plans to expand its farmland to 100,000 hectares in 3 to 5 years.