Founded in Copenhagen and built in Calgary, software and analytics company Provision aims to reduce food waste around the world – from farm to fork – through data transparency. Its proprietary software improves food traceability and safety, connecting the food supply chain with instantaneous tracking insights from farmers, manufacturers and transporters.
Provision expedites food safety processes by automating record-keeping and workforce management to result in fewer food shipments going astray, reduced food spoilage from inefficiencies on shipping docks, and improved information flow about food recalls and quality.
“We turned an idea into a commercial software that has saved countless labour hours, recalls, and waste for industry-leading food companies,” said Erik Westblom, CEO, Provision.
Westblom estimates 97 per cent of food companies, including farmers, processors, and retailers, track their products manually on paper. Across the food supply chain, paper records create blind spots and missing or mistaken information causes excessive food waste and recalls.
On a global scale, a large fraction of food traveling internationally will go to waste, with food loss estimated at 35 per cent. More than 80 per cent of that occurs before food reaches retail.
“I want to work with companies everywhere to find ways to innovate the food ecosystem and find value-added opportunities,” said Westblom. “We're working toward the UN goals of zero per cent hunger and food waste. If we can get enough saturation into our platform, we can run further Machine Learning analysis to identify trends of certain products being wasted.”
Provision grew by over 20 times in 2020 and saw the demand for its software expand from bakeries and beverage manufacturers to food transporters. It is building artificial intelligence (AI) capability with elements of predictive food recall and the auto-classification of food for export using its access to a 50-year data set on recalls for Canada, the U.S. and European Union. It is also working towards building AI insights for use in the grain and horticulture sectors.
For more information on Provision’s transformative technology and other opportunities in Calgary’s innovation ecosystem, visit Live Tech, Love Life.