Sustainable fresh produce business practice: a case of SWIFT Co. Ltd.

Abstract

SWIFT Company Ltd. has the following company mission statement: it will supply only premium quality produce with the highest standard of food safety and every stakeholder in the value chain must fairly benefit from the company's operation. A major problem of the smallholder farmer's structure is that they have to sell their products through middlemen, meaning that they cannot set the price for their own produce since the wholesale market price depends on the demand and supply of that particular time of the day. Swift Co. Ltd. created the model of long-term contract farming with groups of farmers by guaranteeing a minimum buying price, which means that farmers have minimum 100% of margin on the investment. But if the market price goes up, perhaps because their products were destroyed by bad weather, the company will buy at the market price. On the other hand, if the market price goes down when there is a supply surplus, the company will buy at the guaranteed price; our contract farming with farmers has been sustainable for more than 20 years. All the products from contracted farms are produced under strictly controlled safety conditions and quality of the products under the highest food safety and quality standards such as GLOBAL GAP, AGROCHEMICAL FREE, and ORGANIC FARMING while they are processed under, BRC standard, HACCP, TRACEABILITY and SEDEX SMETA. That is why SWIFT products have been well accepted by customers in Europe, Japan, USA, and Australia for more than 3 decades.