SEAFOODplus: Traceability for SMEs

Scientific Alert Note

New model for SME cooperation developed

Independent SMEs in the fish business are under increasing pressure from big companies and supply chains owned by one single company that often can produce more effectively. For many years 'Lean' and 'Supply chain management' have been the keywords within business management to optimize large-scale production. Some of the work taking place in the SEAFOODplus project 6.3 VALID is to develop models for how SME´s can utilize similar management theories as big companies to stay competitive.

Author: Marco Frederiksen, DIFRES

The industrial partner Royal Greenland’s factory in Denmark for producing shrimps in brine has been analysed in detail to improve the understanding of how a big company can take advantage of its ownership of the entire chain from fishing vessels to final consumer product. The preliminary result is that the production is decoupled at a cold store that absorbs the variations in supply and demand. This possibility exists because it concerns a frozen product later transformed to a preserved product in brine just before final sale. The company has a complete traceability system that enables it to trace and track their products in the whole chain. That makes chain management possible.

The model now developed is meant to be used in the fresh fish business. The idea is to adapt the model to make it suitable for SMEs, such that they can create strategic partnerships and cooperation in the whole chain in order to make them more competitive.

: The basic framework in principle. Chain management for SMEs is a possibility because information can be trusted and transferred based on open quality assurance - and traceability.

The keywords are 'traceability' and 'quality assurance'. Without traceability no one will be capable of trusting each other more than today and if quality assurance is lost, quality information is not valid. Analyses have shown that most often traceability is lost after the fishing vessel and first hand sale.

The perspective is that the companies can access trustworthy product information at a very early stage and can buy the fish while the fish is still on board the fishing vessel. Then they have much more time to plan the production and sale than they have today. When information is trustworthy they do not need to spend time on quality inspection and to keep an extra storage to be able to supply its customers in case of product failures. Ideally the only real 'storage' should be on board the vessel until the catch is unloaded at shore.

Time and money are saved by working smarter - not harder.

The future perspective is to take advantage of the information already available and make it available for the customers. 'Story-telling', especially for certain consumer segments, is one of the important means through which SMEs will be able to survive in the future.