In the summer of 2021, a drought in western Canada meant that the supply of brown mustard seeds from farms in that region was severely impacted. Faced with a halt in production of the popular mustard dressing his organization manufactures, one category manager urgently needed to find new suppliers in alternative geographic locations.
Canada is the world’s second-largest producer of mustard seeds, just behind Nepal, and holds 57% of the global export market. The majority of Canadian mustard seed farmers are located in Canada’s western prairies, with the province of Saskatchewan historically growing about 80% of the nation’s mustard crop.
This all changed dramatically in the summer of 2021, when temperatures reached all-time highs and meteorologists recorded an unprecedented drought. This led to production of mustard seeds being slashed to 50,000 tons that year, only around half of the volume produced in 2020.
This created a serious problem for the category manager at a best-selling mustard dressing manufacturer – the main ingredient was no longer available in the required quantity from the Canadian market, so he urgently needed to find new suppliers. However, with Canada being a reliable source of brown mustard seeds for the past 20 years, the need to source alternative suppliers had never arisen before, so he had no idea about the supply market outside of his own country.
Being Canadian, it was necessary to look at the positives. First of all, finding alternative suppliers would help mitigate the impact of the disruption caused by the drought, securing his organization’s multi-million-dollar revenue. It would also strengthen supply chain resilience - with more suppliers to choose from, future disruptions would be easier to avoid. With the climate crisis wreaking havoc on global supply chains, having suppliers in multiple geographic locations simply made sense on every level – and mustard dressing lovers everywhere would be eternally grateful to him.
However, if he couldn’t pull this off, the organization’s production volume would decrease significantly, leading to a major loss of revenue. Not finding new suppliers in alternative locations would also expose the business to future disruptions that might occur in Canada – meaning that he would not become a legend among mustard dressing lovers everywhere.
Thankfully, his organization had recently partnered with Scoutbee, and he’d heard positive feedback from several of his colleagues who were in a similar bind. After entering his search criteria in the user-friendly platform, the AI aggregated and structured billions of supplier data sets to identify suppliers capable of delivering the desired mustard seeds. Seconds later, he received a list of 24 suppliers in locations other than Canada. The most relevant of the thousands of suppliers found were enriched with further data on revenue, employees, and certificates. Based on the best fit for the company, 19 of those suppliers were invited for further negotiations.
The day was saved. The category manager had found 19 previously unknown suppliers of brown mustard seeds – based in locations outside Canada. Thanks to those newly discovered alternative suppliers, the risk of production being halted was mitigated and the organization’s revenue stream was secured.
Strategically, diversifying the supplier portfolio for brown mustard seeds also meant increasing supply chain resilience should there be any further disruptions in the future. On top of that, the entire scouting process had only taken seconds to complete – a fraction of the time it had previously taken him to find new suppliers. So, not only was he a legend internally, mustard lovers all over the world also had a strategic buyer to praise.