New Financial Tool Launched for Seafood Traceability

In 2014, the Institute of Food Technologists’ (IFT) Global Food Traceability Center (GFTC) launched a new tool aimed at helping businesses estimate the likely costs and benefits of traceability systems for their companies. This is the first tool available to the seafood industry for calculating the return-on-investment for traceability improvements, and it can be used by both small and large businesses. The tool was developed with input from industry members and is available for free online at: https://www.seafoodtraceability.org  

The Seafood Traceability Financial Tool uses a straightforward three-part design to assess the potential net benefit traceability systems might offer a company:

• First, it asks users to input basic information about their industry segment, seafood sales revenue, current traceability practices, and their goals and reasons for investing in new traceability systems.
• Next, the software uses this information to identify segments of a company’s operations that might be impacted by implementing traceability (e.g. new market access, legal, information management, etc.).
• Finally, using the above data on existing costs the program confidentially reports the net present value of investing in different levels of traceability — from paper-based to fully interoperable integrated systems — over the company’s preferred timeline. The results page can be saved, edited, or printed.