The contracts ran five years. The data was a snapshot.
A major UK food retailer had made the two hardest commitments in UK fresh produce: long-term grower contracts and sustainability certification at scale. What those commitments needed next was a risk picture that moved as fast as the risks.
Five-year promises. Point-in-time intelligence.
The retailer had done the hard part already: long-term grower contracts and certification at scale. But the intelligence behind those decisions was point-in-time, while the contracts ran five years or more.
Their own analysis showed equity investment drifting away from need. Smallholder production share had halved, and most investment was flowing to the largest, least vulnerable producers.
The risk was locking in growers, and allocating millions in investment, on outdated data.
Millions committed on yesterday’s picture.
Every sourcing commitment and every pound of equity investment was being steered by a snapshot. Left alone, the gap would widen with each contract signed: continuity risk priced on old data, and investment flowing to the producers who needed it least.
A map, a room, a worked example.
In five days, I authored the strategy document that framed the work, then co-led the session that turned it into decisions.
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The Global Fresh Produce Supply Map
The document that framed the work: the global picture, the retailer's position within it, and the six exposures a three-year strategy had to address.
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The working session
A half-day with their sourcing team, structured around three risk fronts moving at different speeds: climate, geopolitical and innovation.
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The worked example
European top fruit, translating a broad risk narrative into ranked, spend-weighted, category-level decisions.
Risk and equity, one variable.
Before, risk was assessed region by region, the data sat with different teams on different systems, and equity spend followed sales volume by default. After, the retailer had an agreed exposure list ranked by pounds at risk, a pilot category chosen for a live test, and a clear roadmap to treat continuity and equity as one variable, directing investment by exposure rather than by how much they happened to buy.
I turned a broad supply chain risk narrative into a spend-weighted, decision-ready strategy that showed a major UK retailer where its money, and its equity investment, was genuinely at risk.
