Mar 18, 2024

New feature adds transparency to Produce Pay

Fresh produce marketers and retailers can have full transparency of produce shipments from the field to their final destination with a new feature from Produce Pay.

Produce Pay’s new Visibility feature ensures buyers of produce shipped from around the world and reduces rejection rates, according to the company.

By combining technology with on-the-ground agronomists, this solution adds a critical capability to the company’s Predictable Commerce Programs, giving growers and buyers greater control of their businesses in an increasingly volatile and unpredictable fresh produce supply chain.

ProducePay’s Visibility solution gives buyers the ability to monitor and manage produce shipments from their fingertips — accessing a centralized, digital dashboard via the company’s platform.

Benefits and features include:

• Real-time, comprehensive information on produce quality, quantity, shipment status and more, captured by agronomists in the field and at shipment. 
• Real-time order tracking including order progress, shipping conditions and location, as well as access to historical transaction data. 
• End-to-end visibility enabling multiple stakeholders to efficiently manage order progress, including acceptance, adjustments, invoicing and rejections.  

 “Delivering high-quality produce across global supply chains is fraught with challenges, leading to high rejection rates, frequent disputes and disappointed customers — not to mention a staggering level of food and economic waste,” said Patrick McCullough, CEO of ProducePay, said in a news release. “We hear it from our customers all the time — more predictability means more profitability.

By giving total visibility into quality and orders from farm to final destination, we’re bringing retailers surety of supply, empowering marketers to fulfill their commitments to deliver produce on time and in full, and giving growers greater confidence that their produce will be accepted after shipment,” he said in the release.

 The Visibility feature gives farmers credibility and buyers quality assurance, said Tony Fadell, engineer, designer and principal at Build Collective, one of ProducePay’s investors.

“The result: produce gets bought in accurate quantities, it’s higher quality when it gets to the store, less food gets wasted,” he said in the release. “All while giving farmers access to upfront financing so that they can grow their crops and plan their next harvest without waiting for payouts from retailers. More profits for farmers and retailers is a win-win-win for farmers, retailers, people that want fresh fruit and vegetables, and our planet.” 

In July 2023, ProducePay collaborated with one of the world’s largest growers and distributors of table grapes, Four Star Fruit, to pilot the Predictable Commerce Program. Leveraging ProducePay’s Visibility solution, this partnership helped one of the nation’s leading retailers achieve less than 1% rejection rates in their table grape shipments — an 80% improvement compared to the standard rejection rate in traditional sourcing programs, according to Produce Pay.

“We’ve never experienced such a high level of quality assurance before,” Jack Campbell, Four Star Fruit CEO, said in the release. “Providing our retail partners with enhanced transparency — giving them line of sight into harvest and supply chain — empowers them with the confidence to bypass additional intermediaries to fulfill year-round supply of top-quality produce.” 

Since its founding, ProducePay has facilitated the trade of more than $10 billion worth of fresh produce across 64 commodities and 20 countries in North America, Central and South America and Europe. In 2024, expects to finance more than $2 billion in fresh produce transactions. The company has been added as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Innovator Communities, was named one of Fast Company’s 2023 World’s Most Innovative Companies and placed on the Inc. 5000 list.