Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL) has entered into a three-year deal with the Morpheus.Network, a blockchain platform provider, to manage its complex supplier document management system across Canada. FCL, founded in 1944, is a Canada-based wholesaling, manufacturing, marketing and administrative co-operative owned by more than 170 independent retail co-operative associations with a 2019 revenue of over US$9B.
“We are very pleased with the results of our work with the Morpheus.Network team. Working with Morpheus.Network has resulted in an efficient throughput of our supplier document management and validation processes. Next up we are looking at the overall visibility of our supply chain from suppliers to FCL warehouses. The transparency provided by Morpheus.Network’s technical solutions fits well with our own co-operative ethos of driving integrity from start to finish.” Raymond Gareau, Supply Chain Manager, Federated Co-operatives Limited.
Regulatory drivers
On January 15, 2019, the Safe Food for Canadians Act (SFCA) began requiring most food companies in Canada to comply with the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SFCR). The SFCA and SFCR regulate food products imported into, or exported from, Canada or traded between provinces.
To ensure food safety and consumer protection, these regulations add new:
- licensing
- preventive controls
- traceability requirements.
For FCL there is a need to:
- reduce and remove barriers and optimise
- automate its global supply chain operations
- ensure food and safety regulatory compliance.
FCL
FCL is primarily a business-to-business (B2B) operation linking many hundreds of suppliers through its warehouses. The core business includes agriculture, energy, food and home and building and covers:
- retailing
- wholesaling
- manufacturing
- marketing
- administration.
Federated Co-operatives has >1,400 retail food stores, home centres, gas bars/convenience stores, agro centres, propane plants and feed plants located across Western Canada. It employees more than 23,000 people.
Morpheus.Network
Morpheus.Network, is a supply chain SaaS middleware platform, integrates legacy and emerging technologies such as blockchain, OCR and ML. It provides supply chain managers with shipment and item visibility for optimising and automating safe and secure end-to-end supply chains. This includes:
- origin, tracking and tracing
- custody
- compliance.
Working with FCL, Morpheus.Network will replace largely manual processes which collected thousands of regulatory certifications and documents from more than 150 suppliers. These need scanning, validating, processing, tracking – and managing.
For example, every year documents expire. New documents arrive from every supplier. This makes for time-consuming and burdensome processes.
The anticipated new solution automates the collection and management of documents from each supplier. It provides a self-serve supplier portal where they can securely upload and manage their documents. The Morpheus.Network Platform will use advanced OCR capabilities – along with API-integration with third-party compliance organisations – to validate each document. Automated and proactive notifications will alert relevant parties before documents expire.
The Morpheus.Network platform establishes a unique ‘Digital Footprint’. This shows current and historical compliance status – backed by blockchain technology as the immutable record.
“This is another exemplary example of the power and flexibility of the Morpheus.Network Platform in being able to adopt to different use cases and provide our customers with exceptional business value. We are excited to continue our close relationship with FCL and move forward with the next phase of further integration and optimization.” Noam Eppel, Co-Founder and COO, Morpheus.Network Inc.
Enterprise Times: what does this mean
Prima facie the driver for this deal between FCL and Morpheus.Network would seem to be ever deeper regulatory standards. The need for both compliance as well as process simplification and management tie tightly to this.
Beneath the surface, improving supply chain efficiency and administration seems, at least to Enterprise Times, to be as important for FCL. With so many suppliers, and outlets, the attractions of a blockchain-based immutable record inspectable by authorised participants are obvious.
