Olam International

A global agri-business, Olam grows, sources, trades and processes food and industrial raw materials across 18 product platforms for over 23,000 customers. With a direct presence in 65 countries, Olam has built a global leadership position in many of its businesses such as Edible Nuts, Spices & Vegetable Ingredients, Cocoa, Coffee, Cotton and Rice.

Olam’s core business advantages

Olam continues to grow strongly across both economic and commodity cycles due to its business model:

1. A differentiated supply chain business operating from seed to shelf
The strength of Olam’s operations starts in the country of origin where it sources from the farm gate. Supported by an extensive network of over 3.9 million farmers, Olam operates across the supply chain to provide a reliable supply of high quality products while providing customised solutions and services to 23,000 customers.
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2. Deep emerging market expertise
Nearly 80% of Olam’s global footprint is in emerging markets that have significant growth potential. Through years of experience of operating in these economies, Olam is able to transfer and adapt best practices to develop new growth opportunities effectively and responsibly.

3. Scalable, repeatable growth based on maximising integration
The evolution of our strategy can be understood as a series of inter-related steps of adjacent product, geographic and value chain expansion, with each step building on prior initiatives without losing focus of our core supply chain trading business. This has led to our strategy of selectively integrating into high value upstream and mid/downstream segments of the value chain, our rice farm in Nigeria and consumer Packaged Foods Business in Africa being examples.

4. Building a competitive advantage through knowledge transfer
To transfer key competencies into new business and geographic adjacencies, a core group of top management talent is deployed to every new business, which enables Olam to transfer its DNA into the new operation and reduce execution risk.

Growing Responsibly

Olam is committed to responsible growth, and believes that it is only by doing business in a sustainable way that long-term value for all stakeholders can be delivered. Olam is revolutionising seed to shelf supply chains through the Olam Sustainability Standard. Each step of Olam’s value chain is being examined to identify and implement measures to sustainably deliver products across all of its geographies by 2020. Olam’s initiatives in rural communities are one aspect of this, and in 2010 The Olam Livelihood Charter (OLC) was launched to set a benchmark for projects that incorporate all eight charter principles of finance, improved yield, labour practices, market access, quality, traceability, social investment and environmental impact. Beyond the OLC, Olam manages a further 160 initiatives from rural electrification and water facilities to building health centres and schools.

Key Facts (FY13)
Founded in 1989 by CEO Sunny Verghese
Listed on Singapore Stock Exchange 2005
24% owned by Temasek Holdings
23,000 employees
Extended network of 3.9 million farmers worldwide
100+ processing plants
15.9 million tonnes sales volume
S$20.80 billion sales turnover

External Commitments
UN CEO Water Mandate
UN Guidelines on Responsible Land Tenure
Fair Labor Ass. member
Forest Footprint Disclosure
Carbon Disclosure Project

Donors & Finance Partners
USAID
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
International Finance Corporation

Awards Rainforest Alliance ‘Sustainable Standard-Setter’ Award 2013
Guardian Sustainable Business Award 2013 for OLC Social impact

Olam Livelihood Charter
Total farmers: 313,476 
Micro-financing, advances for crop purchases and asset investment: US$118.6m 
Training invested: US$3.8m 
Premiums paid for quality: S$13.8m