Sucafina is a multinational coffee merchant founded in 1977 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. With more than 1’200 employees across 32 countries, Sucafina is active at every stage in the coffee supply chain.
01/ Operations
Sucafina buys directly from source, and works with a network of almost180’000 growing partners around the world.
02/ Values
Sucafina’s vision is to be the leading sustainable Farm to Roaster coffee company in the world, and sustainability is embedded into every part of the business and work of every employee.
02/ Financing
The group’s trading activities are financed via their flagship borrowing base facility, with ING Bank acting as Security Agent. The USD500mn facility is provided by asyndication of 15 banks, with inventory and receivables guaranteed as collateral. Through trading activity, this collateral is constantly evolving, which places a burden on Sucafina and the Security Agent to report in a timely and accurate manner
Sucafina’s inventory is stored by a network of third-party warehouses around the world, and they’re obligated to report on its status to lenders twice per month.
01/ Their Needs
Timely and efficient coordination with a global network of 100+ warehouses to collect data on the ‘real stock position’, and reconcile it with the ‘expected value’ from their internal systems.
02/ Their Setup
Email and Excel were the main tools used, leading to a lot of manual entry and information silos between Sucafina operators, which required careful internal coordination for every report.
02/ Their Objectives
Strengthening their processes, gaining operational efficiency, and ensuring a smooth relationship with their banks were the key motivating factors. Aware of the need for innovation as driver of sustainable growth, Sucafina also wanted to promote a strong digital image to the market.
“At Sucafina we want to lead the reshaping of the industry into one that creates sustainable value for all stakeholders.
For our banks, this sustainable value often comes in the form of transparency, neutrality, reliability, and security of information – and particularly the information that’s managed in the framework of these kinds of facilities.”
Carolina Viaud, Global Logistics Manager
Sucafina
The Digital Agent gathers data from across the Komgo Network, and supplements it with external sources to provide near real-time intelligence on the key metrics that matter for lenders and borrowers.
01/ Transactional Security
In the case of a borrowing base, plugging the Digital Agent into stock reconciliation (holding certificate) or accounts receivable (invoice) workflows enables a live view on the status of collateral, ensuring transparency in the facility and bringing comfort to the lenders.
02/ Contextual Reporting
The Digital Agent can be programmed to act like a virtual data analyst, facilitating decision-making by ensuring that contextualised information finds its way into the hands of the right people, at the right time.
Sucafina implemented digital stock reconciliation on their flagship borrowing base facility managed by ING Bank. The solution leveraged email as the predominant existing tool, but uses a common framework to collect and recycle information among all stakeholders involved.
Step 01/
Streamlined data collection from the warehouses to build a centralised inventory report that could be easily reconciled with the expected data fromSucafina’s internal systems.
Step 02/
Involved transferring this report to the bank in a standardised format to enable faster validation and drawings under the facility.
”Time saved on report validation is one of the biggest benefits we’ve seen on the SecurityAgent’s side. The average time needed has been reduced from 3 hours to about 10 minutes.”
Signe Miķelsone, Snr Transaction Manager
ING Geneva
“Komgo is connecting all stakeholders to this one centralised, neutral network where the information is managed in a secure environment, and is coming directly from the warehouses, so you have full transparency."
Carolina Viaud, Global Logistics Manager
Sucafina
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