As one of Sri Lanka’s largest food manufacturing conglomerates, the CBL
Group annually sources over 15,000 – 17,000MT in agriculture raw material like
Corn, Soya, Green Gram, Groundnuts, Rice and Spices each year from its
network of 13,000+ registered farmers. These raw materials are used in CBL’s
brands like Samaposha, Nutriline, Sera, Lankasoy, Ritzbury and Munchee and,
strengthening this supply chain against future risk is crucial to CBL’s
sustainability agenda.
CBL’s SMART Agro digital app was launched this week, marking a milestone in
CBL’s strategy to strengthen its vertically integrated agriculture supply chain against
future risk through digitization and technology. The app, which can be downloaded
free of charge; digitizes new farmer registration and allows verified farmers
registered with CBL’s network to access a range of services including loans, contract
term management and real time support from CBL’s agriculture field teams.
CBL’s agriculture sourcing operations have been expanded over the past few years
to cater to growing demand and, ensuring transparency and seamless
communication to support this expansion is a key priority.
“The SMART Agro Platform will address key risks in our agricultural sourcing chain
by enabling the sharing of critical information for management decisions to increase
productivity and profitability for farming communities.” Says Dr. Rukshan Gunatilaka,
Director Agribusiness Development at Plenty Foods (Pvt) Ltd.
The SMART AGRO app, was developed through an in-house collaboration between
CBL’s Agriculture and IT teams and was partially funded by the International Labour
Organization (ILO), to support CBL’s aim of securing agriculture raw material supply
for production through sustainable means. Making farming a profitable and
productive venture for farmers through guaranteed pricing and fair terms is a key
part of CBL’s strategy. CBL SMART AGRO connects farmers to dedicated
agriculture field teams and real time support by automating a large component of
manual operations.
The SMART Agro app connects farmers directly with agriculture field teams.
Pictured are CBL’s field officers demonstrating the ease of this app to farmers.
