03 Apr Letter from Blendhub’s CEO amid the COVID-19 crisis
Henrik S. Kristensen makes a public call for collaboration to make the global food supply chain more efficient, resilient, and able to meet the rising demands for safe and affordable food products.
I am Henrik S. Kristensen, CEO and founder of Blendhub, a multi-localized network of production hubs for powdered food and ingredients around the world that aims at bringing food production sites closer to the raw materials and the final consumer.
This open letter intends to reach not only the general public but also food producers, ingredient producers, food distributors and brands, as a call for collaboration to join efforts and minimize the impact of the COVID-19 on the global food supply chain.
As the situation progresses, the access to fresh food production and supply will be under additional pressure, and more powder-based foods and ingredients with a longer shelf-life and adequate nutritional values will be complementing other types of food that may become short in supply.
It is clear that the agri-food sector must be better prepared to overcome this crisis –and future ones– by making food production more agile and resilient; by having more storage capacity; and by offering convenience and adequate nutritional value to feed more people in a faster, cost-effective and easier way.
This crisis has surfaced critical deficiencies, which leads us to seek collaborations that go beyond the mere supplier-customer relationship and create ties around the mission of ensuring the efficiency of the entire supply chain and securing food for all.
At this time, the world needs more and faster production to meet the demand and to secure the production of food and products based on the local conditions related to the impact of the pandemic. Moreover, we also need to secure the necessary raw materials, many of which could be blocked or delayed at ports due to restrictions of movement and, therefore, affecting the supply chain and forcing producers to either change their recipes or stop producing.
Our network of multi-localized hubs allows us to create stronger partnerships: to identify global and local markets’ needs and proactively solve immediate and longer-term challenges, such as creating meals for emergency support teams and field hospitals.
My team and I are fully committed to serve our communities, make food available to more people in more places, and to contact any organization interested in sharing knowledge and capabilities to ease the stress and fulfill the needs of powder food production and distribution worldwide.
We would appreciate your feedback and the opportunity to discuss how we can best collaborate during this unprecedented situation to improve the supply chain operations or potentially develop food and technological innovation to streamline the industry.
Thank you to the teams around the world, from medical staff to first responders and all the essential services, and of course, to the food supply chain for all the efforts. We are with all of you.
Only together will we be able to overcome the challenges of today and tomorrow.