Year in review: Dole International

Dole was our cover feature in the August edition of Business Chief. We spoke to Arindam Sengupta, Global VP Strategic Sourcing & Procurement at Dole, who detailed the strategic and technological solutions powering supply chain innovation in the agribusiness industry.

Sengupta saw the potential for a revolution in the way sourcing and procurement in agribusiness are carried out and Dole has accordingly implemented a number of strategies geared towards improving efficiency and benefitting the bottom line at the business. “Traditionally the agribusiness sector has been behind in terms of procurement practices,” he explained. “Partly that’s due to its complexity, but also to the fact that new technologies, digitalisation and everything else which has been applied in other industries has not been as developed on the agribusiness side.”

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Achieving that revolution, Sengupta explained, would require significant streamlining. “We are moving from a very decentralised procurement structure with a lot of buyers to a much more centralised, centre of excellence model. That’s ensuring the different Dole entities have a standardised approach, while still maintaining flexibility at the local level for all the operational and tactical buying.”

Also critical to achieving that revolution was technology, particularly methods and models of prediction.  “To come up with a predictive model of demand and supply patterns globally and regionally is always a challenge,” he said. “We have recently been working to develop a much more sophisticated model which not only uses historical data but incorporates many other factors. That includes farmer behaviour, demand in the market, inventory being held in different locations and markets, and how trends are changing in the industry in terms of consumption and crop growing, et cetera.” 

For the full interview with Mahapatra and many more details on the work Dole is doing, take a look at our August issue or the company’s exclusive brochure.