Consultancy services on Traceability system for SMEs in Lac Duong Distric

CALL FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST (EOI):

COFFEE AGROFORESTRY AND FOREST ENHANCEMENT FOR REDD+ (Café-REDD+) PROJECT IN LAM DONG

CONSULTANCY SERVICES ON TRACEABILITY SYSTEM FOR SMEs IN LAC DUONG DISTRICT

BACKGROUND

About SNV Netherlands Development Organization

SNV is an international not-for-profit development organisation, working in more than 25 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. SNV is a mission-driven global development partner, rooted in the contexts and societies where we work. And that mission is to strengthen capacities and catalyse partnerships that transform the agri-food, energy, and water systems to enable sustainable and more equitable lives for all. Our global team of advisors use their specialist expertise to facilitate sustainable change in the livelihoods of millions of people living in poverty.

About Café-REDD+

SNV has obtained funding from the International Climate Initiative (IKI) for a project entitled ‘Coffee Agroforestry and Forest Enhancement for REDD+ in Lam Dong’ (CAFÉ-REDD), from 2018-2024. The project aims to establish and develop a public-private-producer partnership (4P) for forest landscape conservation and restoration in one of Lam Dong’s most important forested landscapes - the Lang Biang Biosphere Reserve comprised of Bi Doup Nui Ba National Park and surrounding agricultural land in Lac Duong District.

Activities of the project include; i) strengthening public sector capacity for climate smart/sustainable land use planning and collaborative management of forests with communities, ii) working with coffee-buying companies to improve monitoring and traceability systems to prevent deforestation in supply chains; and iii) investing in (mainly ethnic minority) smallholder farmers to promote climate smart, sustainable coffee production techniques leading to improved coffee quality and prices, whilst also promoting landscape restoration through mixed agroforestry systems and alternative livelihoods.

Since its inception in 2018, the project has supported over 3,355 farmers in the district through the provision of more than half of million coffee and tree seedlings, training of the farmers in better practices, formation of farmer groups, and building connections between these farmers and coffee companies in inclusive value chain models. These activities allow farmers to rejuvenate coffee farms and introduce multi-purpose tree species (macadamia and persimmon) and improve the quality of their coffee and their marketing power. This results in diversifying their incomes an creating economic and climatic resilience.

About traceability system

Traceability is the ability to access any or all information about a product throughout its life cycle by using a system of recorded identifications. Traceability also relates to the ability to track and trace along the supply chain. While tracking allows the supply-chain stakeholders to follow the downstream path of a product, tracing enables identification of the origins and characteristics of the product when following an upstream path in the supply chain.

To support the coffee enterprise to demonstrate the deforestation-free coffee linkage chains to consumers, Café-REDD project had selects 5 units to pilot and operate the digital traceability systems in 2020 and 2021. Based on the positive impact of demo system, the project continued to scale up the traceability system for additional nine units with various agricultural activities such as herbal, veggies, persimmon, etc… Accompany with this system, the project also provided 250.000 QR code stamps for the enterprises to integrate supply chain information, production areas, and Tera-I system (The Almost Real-Time Monitoring Solution system) to monitor the forest protection and reduce encroachment pressure on forests in adjacent land areas. At least five companies that won the Accelerator Fund (AF) commit to maintaining the digital traceability systems to trace supply and demonstrate compliance with certification/standards, and deforestation free requirements.

OBJECTIVES OF THE ASSIGNMENT

The overall objective of the assignment is to review and strengthen the digital supply chain traceability system linked with satellite-based deforestation monitoring in collaboration with companies/cooperative. This will allow private companies and other value-chain actors to trace supply and demonstrate compliance with certification/standards, and deforestation free requirements. Create and print QR codes with full traceability information of each company/cooperative supported by Cafe-REDD.

Detailed Tasks

The expected tasks to meet this objective are as follows:

• Review and evaluate the traceability system, called TraceFarm app (developed by TraceVerified Ltd.) of 4 enterprises of Accelerator Fund and recommend solutions to strengthen the operation.
• Apply the TraceFarm Platform (developed by TraceVerified Ltd.) to scan and build up the traceability systems for 2 new enterprises/cooperatives.
• Prepare the operation usage guideline and provide the training to collect/update the data for 6 enterprises/cooperatives.
• Print 120.000 QR Code stamps for 6 enterprises/cooperatives.
• Guide businesses to activate and use QR code stamps.
• Prepare final report and recommendations.

For more details on the Expression of Interest process, submission requirements, and evaluation details, please see corresponding sections below:

Selection Process

SNV will review all Expressions of Interest received in accordance with the guidelines and criteria in this solicitation. SNV reserves the right to exclude any EOIs that do not meet the guidelines. Please note that SNV is unable to provide detailed feedback to those EOIs that are not selected.

Step 1: SNV will shortlist selected EOIs, and unsuccessful respondents will be notified. Successful applicants will be contacted by SNV.

Step 2: SNV will release Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for the specific activities and contract with the selected organizations/ consultants.

Protection of Information

We request that Expressions of Interest responses be free of any intellectual property that the applicant wishes to protect. Should offerors wish to include proprietary intellectual property that they believe would be helpful for SNV, please note the proprietary nature of such information. Costing information will be kept confidential and will not be shared beyond SNV.

Issuance of this EOI does not constitute a commitment, award, or engagement on the part of SNV nor does it commit SNV to any future commitment or engagement.

Note: SNV reserves the right to change or cancel this requirement in the EOI/or solicitation process at any time.