CBL’s farmer network goes digital with CBL’s SMART AGRO app

As one of Sri Lanka’s largest food manufacturing conglomerates, the CBL Group annually sources over 15,000 – 17,000MT in agriculture raw material like Corn, Soya, Green Gram, Groundnuts, Rice and Spices each year from its network of 13,000+ registered farmers. These raw materials are used in CBL’s brands like Samaposha, Nutriline, Sera, Lankasoy, Ritzbury and Munchee and, strengthening this supply chain against future risk is crucial to CBL’s sustainability agenda.

CBL’s SMART Agro digital app was launched this week, marking a milestone in CBL’s strategy to strengthen its vertically integrated agriculture supply chain against future risk through digitization and technology. The app, which can be downloaded free of charge; digitizes new farmer registration and allows verified farmers registered with CBL’s network to access a range of services including loans, contract term management and real time support from CBL’s agriculture field teams.

CBL’s agriculture sourcing operations have been expanded over the past few years to cater to growing demand and, ensuring transparency and seamless communication to support this expansion is a key priority.

“The SMART Agro Platform will address key risks in our agricultural sourcing chain by enabling the sharing of critical information for management decisions to increase productivity and profitability for farming communities.” Says Dr. Rukshan Gunatilaka, Director Agribusiness Development at Plenty Foods (Pvt) Ltd.

The SMART AGRO app, was developed through an in-house collaboration between CBL’s Agriculture and IT teams and was partially funded by the International Labour Organization (ILO), to support CBL’s aim of securing agriculture raw material supply for production through sustainable means. Making farming a profitable and productive venture for farmers through guaranteed pricing and fair terms is a key part of CBL’s strategy. CBL SMART AGRO connects farmers to dedicated agriculture field teams and real time support by automating a large component of manual operations.