The Hague, 19 December 2013 Main Capital has acquired a substantial interest in the successful cloud-based company Chainfood. Chainfood delivers a SaaS platform for the monitoring of company supply chains in the Food, Pharmacy and Consumer Goods sectors with sustainability and safety playing an important role. Leading companies such as Sainsbury’s, Ferrero, The Forest Trust and MSD make use of Chainfood’s solutions. Key to Chainfood’s solution, called ChainPoint, is the fact that multiple stakeholders in the supply chain are brought together under a single platform so that the whole supply chain can be monitored effectively. Integrated collaboration between all stakeholders is the motto. Recent events such as the horsemeat scandal and the collapse of a clothing factory in Bangladesh affect the image of companies and brands. Supply Chain monitoring with ChainPoint can reduce the chance of such events happening.
The uniqueness of ChainPoint goes hand in hand with its complete support for sustainable sourcing, including traceability, monitoring and auditing. Main Capital’s investment will allow Chainfood to continue to pursue its international expansion through, amongst other things, an effective partnering strategy. Although the platform is suitable for use in all sectors, the key markets targeted in the coming years will be those of Food & Beverage, Pharmaceutical and Consumer Goods, along with worldwide Roundtables who are actively focussed upon sustainability. As a result, initiatives such as the Better Cotton Initiative and the Roundtable for Responsible Soy are already customers of Chainfood’s platform.
Additionally Chainfood focusses on the owners of Certification Schemes covering various sustainability certifications, as well as consultants operating in the areas of sustainability and food safety. Events such as the horsemeat scandal have clearly demonstrated that today’s large multinationals can no longer hide behind comments such as “we didn’t know”. Checking, and therefore the monitoring of, the most complex supply chains has become essential, and Chainfood is clearly the world’s most progressive party in this respect, according to Charly Zwemstra, Managing Partner at Main Capital Partners. Large, fast moving consumer goods companies, such as Heineken, also want to be able to show if their products have been sustainably produced, says Zwemstra.
Main Capital is a SaaS / software industry oriented investor with extensive experience in solid, scalable software companies. Priorities in all their investments are internationalisation, scalable growth (e.g. through partnerships), and creating growing, recurring revenues. Recently, Main Capital successfully sold cloud backup company IASO to GFI software. This year, Main Capital has already invested in Regas (software focussed on the primary processes of health and welfare), as well as Connexys (HR and talent management software). Additionally, the investor has acquired a new fund this year where the enthusiasm has been so great that the fund has been over-subscribed. Johan Zandbergen, CEO of Chainfood: “The experience and knowledge brought along by Main as an investment partner was key to us commencing this new phase of growth together with Main. In the coming years, we will focus upon our international growth strategy, where it is crucial to harness a mature partnering channel. We are convinced that Main can help us in this respect”.
About Chainfood:
Chainfood believes that agro and food production chains can be far more effective through better cooperation to the benefit of all chain partners, consumers and our planet, something which Chainfood calls Supply Chain Collaboration. Improved collaboration between companies, both horizontally and vertically in the chain, can deliver real benefits. Quality and sustainability can be increased, whilst risks and costs can be reduced. With ChainPoint as a software platform, Chainfood helps companies worldwide with the monitoring of supply chains by connecting systems and sharing information. ChainPoint delivers, among other things, traceability, trading, alerts, delivery management, auditing, monitoring and business intelligence along the production chain.
For more information, please contact Johan Zandbergen.
Chainfood B.V., Kroonpark 10, 6831 GV, Arnhem
Tel: +31 (0)26-84 53 650
j.zandbergen@chainfood.com
