Sometimes the most important business partnerships start in a hotel conference room rather than a boardroom. In December 2018, two Fijian organisations met at a regional networking event in Tonga and began a conversation that has since reshaped how one of the country’s largest agricultural exporters manages its supply chain.
The event was organised under the Promoting Nutritious Food Systems in the Pacific Islands initiative, run by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA). On one side of the introduction was Nature’s Way Cooperative (NWC), a Fijian exporter that has been operating since 1995. On the other was Traseable Solutions, a Pacific ICT company specialising in digital traceability for agriculture and fisheries. What followed was a partnership that turned a paper-heavy export operation into a digitally connected one.
Who Nature’s Way Cooperative Is
NWC plays a critical role in Fiji’s horticultural export sector. Under bilateral quarantine agreements, the cooperative carries out the mandatory quarantine treatments required for Fijian produce destined for overseas markets. Each year it handles roughly 1,300 tonnes of papaya, mango, breadfruit, and aubergine on behalf of around 350 member shareholders, most of them smallholder farmers.
For General Manager Donald Pickering, the goal was straightforward: build a more efficient traceback system that could handle modern compliance requirements without slowing the cooperative down.
The Innovation Grant That Made It Possible
The funding came through CTA and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) under the Innovation Grant Facility, which offered Pacific agro-SMEs grants of up to €17,000 to expand their businesses through digital tools. NWC saw the grant as the moment to modernise its traceability infrastructure, and Traseable Solutions was the technology partner brought in to deliver it.
That partner choice wasn’t random. Traseable Solutions had been the winning team at the 2018 Pacific AgriHack Lab — a competition that ran fifteen finalist teams through training in business modelling, finance, and intellectual property before selecting the strongest concept. Traseable’s submission, a digital agriculture platform called Traseable Farms, took the top prize and €5,000 in development funding. The team behind it — Managing Director Kenneth Katafono and co-founder Shaunalee Katafono — brought more than a decade of experience in information systems design and were among the early adopters of blockchain technology in the region.
What Was Built
The system delivered for NWC moved several core processes into a single digital workflow:
- Grower supply forms were digitised, removing duplicate paperwork at intake
- A web-based traceability platform now links farmer information directly to commodity treatment data
- Multiple stamped codes on export cartons were replaced with a single QR code
- Real-time visibility of carton and consignment data is now available to NWC staff, with much faster traceback when a query comes in from a buyer
The system was on track to be fully operational by the second quarter of 2020.
Why It Matters Beyond NWC
Speaking about the broader picture, CTA Operations Officer Dimsoy Cruickshank underscored the role of small and medium enterprises and producer organisations in value chain development. That role becomes much easier to play when the technology is genuinely accessible — a point Kenneth Katafono has made consistently about the Traseable Farms vision: putting useful platforms in the hands of farmers, buyers, and logistics providers, not just the largest players in the chain.
The growth numbers tell their own story. “In 2019, our revenue grew almost 270% on the previous year,” Katafono noted, pointing to the demand for digital tools across Pacific agribusiness.
The Next Step: GlobalGAP
With the new system in place, NWC is now positioned to pursue GlobalGAP certification — an internationally recognised food safety and sustainability standard that requires farm-to-customer traceability. That requirement was previously a serious barrier; with the digital backbone now in place, it becomes a realistic goal. And GlobalGAP opens doors to high-value markets that were difficult to reach before.
For both organisations, the partnership has been a reminder that the right introduction at the right event can move an entire value chain forward.