TraceGains Gather Users Gain Access to Speed and Agility Solutions to Combat Supply Chain Disruption Without Enterprise License

TraceGains, the world’s only networked ingredients sourcing platform, today announced it has opened global access to its Networked Ingredients Marketplace with the introduction of TraceGains Gather^™. This revolutionary solution is at the forefront of supply chain management platforms, enabling food and beverage brands to capitalize on speed and agility to remain competitive amid shifting market conditions and fluctuating supply. TraceGains Gather removes the roadblocks of broader enterprise software decisions from end users by giving them immediate individual access to solutions that empower them to overcome today’s challenges and perform their jobs.

“TraceGains Gather is an open marketplace for information exchange, and it’s doing for the consumer goods supply chain what user-centric solutions like LinkedIn, Slack and Zoom have done for their respective industries. It empowers users to tap into a vast and growing network of people and information to immediately collaborate without friction,” said John Thorpe, Principal Product Manager at TraceGains. “Offering free access for foundational capabilities eliminates the enterprise software purchase decision, and users are able to be productive as soon as they sign up.”

Since the beta launch in July, TraceGains Gather has amassed 50,000 users across nearly 20,000 consumer goods companies. The impact of this growth means TraceGains Gather is already achieving the “network effect,” resulting in faster, more efficient information exchange across a democratized business ecosystem capable of evolving faster than legacy systems. TraceGains and TraceGains Gather also integrate with legacy ERP and PLM systems.

“TraceGains is our playbook for driving supply chain initiatives through strategic sourcing, particularly now that we’re getting back to business and focused on growth,” T. Marzetti’s Sr. Manager of Technical Supply and Raw Materials Erin Tarr said. “The TraceGains Networked Ingredients Marketplace helped us cut sourcing from months to weeks without adding staff. Now, Gather gives us a uniquely rapid way to communicate with our R&D groups and collaborate with procurement teams.”

Recent supply chain disruptions have created upheaval for companies and consumers alike. TraceGains data shows that ingredient shortages forced nearly 40% of brands to modify nearly two dozen product formulas. Rising costs pushed another 65% to raise prices, while 49% stopped production of certain products altogether. If left unchecked, inefficient supply chains could cost companies $800 billion in lost growth, according to Kearney, a global management consulting firm.

TraceGains designed Gather for speed and agility. Increasingly, procurement, R&D, regulatory, quality assurance, and legal teams need to collaborate more efficiently in order to keep pace with their dynamic markets. Markets move faster than ever, and TraceGains Gather allows teams to move at market pace.

“R&D professionals use TraceGains Gather to significantly shorten their time to market, while ensuring the integrity of label claims and without disrupting manufacturing,” said Thorpe. “This rapid access to detailed ingredient specifications enables brands to quickly design products or re-formulate existing ones amid changing market and sourcing challenges. It’s quickly becoming where the supply chain works.”

By harnessing the power of its flagship Networked Ingredients Marketplace, TraceGains Gather helps teams uncover new partnerships, share information quickly, and easily source ingredients from new suppliers with confidence while boosting diversity among supplier relationships – all through one integrated platform. These features include:

• Networked Ingredients Marketplace – With access to the industry’s most powerful network of ingredients and suppliers across food, beverage, and dietary supplements customers have access to millions of ingredient documents at the click of a button, right down to the detailed specification data companies need for reformulation and new product development.
  
  
• Networked Intelligence – This cross-functional solution helps consumer goods companies manage the increasingly complex web of formulations amid constantly changing ingredient accessibility and status updates. By automatically flagging impending ingredient shortages, potential safety recalls, and other risks customized for each enterprise’s supply chain, Networked Intelligence offers manufacturers and suppliers a complete, integrated view into ingredient-level risks that can take days or weeks to manually track.
  
  
• Customer Manager – Through the Customer Manager tool, suppliers can communicate with new and existing customers on requests, list their items and information on the Marketplace, manage communications in one place, and more. Users can also maintain quality documents in the document library, the single source of truth that lets entire teams move faster with instant access to technical specifications.
  
  
• Collaborative Workspaces – With this tool, users can create, view, and manage shared workspaces with internal teams or strategic partners, including researching Marketplace items, creating “watch lists” for ingredients or suppliers, collaborating on projects, and more.

“We work with more than 250 suppliers worldwide who serve our network of some of the largest food brands in the United States,” said D’yana Gerda, Food Safety & Quality Assurance Analyst at Camerican International, a division of the Gellert Global Group and global provider of high-quality canned and frozen foods. “With TraceGains Gather, we ensure that our distributed teams have access to the same ingredient-level data in real-time, an imperative for our business in even the simplest of times, but especially now with the ongoing bottlenecks in global supply chains.”

For more information on TraceGains Gather, visit tracegains.com.

Entries for the thirty fifth anniversary edition of the prestigious British Frozen Food Awards are now open.

Since 1988, the British Frozen Food Federation’s accolades have recognised the most innovative, advanced, and great-tasting products in both the retail and catering arenas.

Rupert Ashby, CEO of BFFF said: “The underlying objective of the awards is to showcase the quality and innovation of frozen food to consumers and chefs alike, along with commending frozen food pioneers. The quality of entries gets better every year, and our expert panels of judges will no doubt be impressed with the standard of innovation in 2023.”

Bronze, silver and gold accolades will be awarded in 11 retail and nine foodservice categories. The awards cover sweet, savoury and free-from frozen foods with bakery, side dishes and main meal components all recognised. All gold winners will be in the running to receive the top award of ‘Best Retail Product’ or ‘Best Foodservice Product’.

Aldi scooped the prestigious Retail Meat Main Product award in 2022 for its Specially Selected 4 Cheese & Onion Quarter Pounders whilst Northcoast Seafoods took home the Best Retail Fish Main Product award for their Wild Red Shrimp.

Rupert added: “Respected across the food industry, the BFFF awards signify product excellence and winners are invited to publicise their achievements as an endorsement of quality.”

The retail awards are unique in that the winners are judged by panels of independent consumers from across the UK who mark the products blind for appearance, taste, and aroma before moving on to assess them for innovation, packaging, preparation instructions, likelihood of purchase and value for money.

The Foodservice Awards are rigorously judged by impartial members of the prestigious Craft Guild of Chefs.

Guild member Lee Tynan, food development director at Creative Foods, was a judge for the 2022 awards and said: “The awards showcase the wide range of innovation that’s taking place in the frozen food industry. The judging process is tough and uncompromising so the standard of winning foodservice products is very high.”

Winners will be revealed at the annual BFFF Gala Dinner Dance on Thursday 15 June 2023 at The Brewery, London. The awards are open to members of BFFF and can be entered online. Businesses who are not yet members can sign up before entering.

The Independent Review Panel, tasked by the government to investigate labour shortages in the food supply chain, has launched an online questionnaire in a bid to understand some of the challenges being seen within agriculture, processing, and food and non-alcoholic drink manufacturing.

Chaired by John Shropshire, Chairman of G’s Fresh Group, the panel will use the insight to make recommendations to government on how to address the challenges.

Whilst we all have busy agendas, we know this is impacting a number of our members, so we would be grateful if you could spare the time to complete the questionnaire and ensure the panel has the vital data they require to inform their understanding.

For reference, the sectors covered as part of this review are:

• Farming Sectors, including Pigs, Eggs, Poultry, Red Meat, Dairy, Arable and Edible Horticulture
• Primary Processing, including Meat Processing and Seafood Processing
• Food and non-alcoholic drink Manufacturing

You can access the questionnaire here: Independent Review into Labour Shortages survey (qualtrics.com).

Should you wish, you can preview the questions here

The Independent review into labour shortages in the food supply chain is independent of Government. The survey does not collect any personal information. Defra analysts are administering and processing the survey on behalf of the Chair and Expert Panel. All information collected through the survey will be stored securely, anonymised and collated in a report such that both businesses and individuals cannot be identified.

If you have any questions or need assistance accessing the questionnaire, please contact independent.labour.review@defra.gov.uk.