FMI debuts digital platform to ease supply chain crunch

FMI - The Food Industry has partnered with agriculture software company The Seam to launch a new digital platform that will help retailers and wholesalers run a safe and efficient supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. The new platform also carries a component that could help retailers discover and connect with new private brand manufacturers.

Mark W. Baum, chief collaboration officer and senior vice president of industry relations at FMI, said the tool ensures that the food supply chain remains safe, connecting FMI and related product suppliers with capacity, and FMI member companies in need of assistance, quickly and more precisely through a digitized system.

“This allows us to assist our FMI food retailers and wholesalers fulfill needs at grocery stores, which are experiencing skyrocketing demand, and at the same time, assist our product supplier members in creating new relationships and providing their needs,” he said. It’s thought that these new relationships could include store brand suppliers connecting with retailers.

The platform is called The Food Industry Exchange (sponsored by FMI and powered by The Seam) and at its core will enable sellers to display available products (such as fresh meat, masks, labor services, transportation services and the foodservice products) that are available during the pandemic to efficiently fuel the supply chain and take advantage of the ability to support any disruptions in the supply chain, and help with additional sourcing or alternative solutions. 

The buyer-seller platform also connects suppliers and wholesalers with retailers via a secure, verified and subscription-based platform, and that could open doors between private brand manufacturers and retailers. Store Brands has reached out to FMI for further comment on how private brand suppliers could leverage connections on the platform. 

“Technology drives efficiencies and fuels markets and connecting suppliers with buyers is what we do best at The Seam,” said Mark Pryor, CEO of The Seam, headquartered in Memphis, Tenn. “We are honored to collaborate with FMI to develop this real-time exchange that will digitize and interconnect a geographically dispersed supply chain.”