Direct · Agribusiness
Sweet Potatoes Australia
Australia's largest sweet potato producer identifies high-value alternatives for waste.
Customer profile
Sweet Potatoes Australia, based in the Bundaberg region of Queensland, supplies both domestic and international markets year-round. The largest producer of sweet potatoes in Australia, the company focuses heavily on data, sustainability and transparency to bring consistent quality to consumers, with significant waste reduction targets driving operational priorities.
Situation
The challenges that needed addressing.
No tools for scenario modelling
Forecasting scenarios is central to how the company makes decisions. Without a complete understanding of the true cost of waste, accurate modelling of process alternatives was not possible; decisions were based on what the team thought, not on data.
No way to communicate value
Without analysed waste data, Sweet Potatoes Australia could not tabulate and demonstrate waste's impact on the bottom line, limiting capital expenditure opportunities and enterprise-level decisions.
No way to track use and wastage
Significant waste reduction targets required granular datasets for forecasting and modelling. No existing tool could provide that level of measurement across production and supply.
Solution
How Empauer helped.
In 2020, Sweet Potatoes Australia participated in a Direct pilot study that captured process data and built out the scenarios the company was looking to model. Able to model its value-add facilities, where product is placed into different weighted bags, the company could see the impact of different approaches and identify which value-add products perform best. The straightforward interface made it easy to assess the true cost of waste as a first step towards developing new strategies to address it.
“Comparative analysis to drive decisions: that's what I'm really excited about. Right now, we make those decisions, but they're not based on data. They're just based on what we think.”
Outcomes
What the work delivered.
Improved scenario modelling
Direct enabled Sweet Potatoes Australia to validate a variety of data-based decisions and present scenarios to internal stakeholders, illustrating the value of capital expenditure with evidence rather than assumption.
New business opportunities
Direct's assessment revealed that 5% of all sweet potato material inputs end up in non-income destinations. Redirecting these to higher-value uses including animal feed, food rescue, or extracting nutrients from vine waste, could transform waste into income.
Better sustainability data
With waste reduction a major driver, Direct gave fast and accurate insights into cost and mass waste hotspots, with scope to add GHG emission and nutritional content metrics as the tool develops.
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