Indonesia-based e-commerce and supply chain integration platform Aruna has partnered with North Coast Seafoods to bring blue swimming crab caught within its network of fishermen to the U.S.
Aruna, a startup founded in 2016, works to create a fair trading environment for Indonesian fishermen to improve their livelihoods while simultaneously enhancing the traceability of the country's blue swimming crab fishery.
Aruna CEO and Co-Founder Farid Naufal Aslam told SeafoodSource during Seafood Expo North America – which ran from 10 to 12 March in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. – that the company accomplishes its goals by giving fishermen the tools they need to enjoy a more transparent trading environment and reduce middlemen.
To accomplish that goal, Aruna has created a business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce and supply chain integration platform that directly connects 55,000 fishermen in Indonesia with buyers.
“This community consists of what we call Aruna hubs,” Aslam said. “The hubs are warehouses, as well as mini processing facilities, and we have 150 locations all over Indonesia that are covering these 55,000 fishermen – that’s our scale. We already cover all over Indonesia, and we can say in terms of the fishermen network, we are the leading one in Indonesia.”
The company focuses heavily on the blue swimming crab fishery, which is primarily fished on a small scale by local fishermen. Social issues have remained a concern in the fishery, including an unequal supply chain that sees processors taking the majority of the profit in the fishery and fishers frequently living at wages below the national average.
The small-scale nature of the fishery, Aslam said, is a part of the problem that Aruna is aiming to solve.
“It’s created a lot of middlemen along the way, so the supply chain is ineffective. In reality, it has become like six to seven middlemen along the way,” he said. That is, in part, caused by the archipelagic geography of Indonesia, which naturally separates communities and infrastructure, he added.
Aslam said what Aruna manages to do is consolidate the supply chain, which results in a more robust, efficient, and traceable supply chain that can pay fishers more for their catch. It also helps fishermen by educating them on what sort of quality or catch is being purchased at the time.
“Previously, they were far away from the market. They didn’t know the real specifications that the market needed,” Aslam said. “Now, with us, they know what they want to sell; they sell specific types of products with specific quality. With that condition, they are selling less, but they are getting more in terms of their income.”
To further increase the value, Aruna enhances the traceability of the fishery by providing GPS trackers that can determine exactly where fishermen are acquiring their catch – information which is passed on to companies that want to be sure their supply chains are sound.
Aruna's other co-founder, Utari Octavianty, is related to fishermen herself, and Aslam said the company started some of the first “hubs” in her hometown.
“Utari comes from a coastline village in Borneo,” Aslam said. “She was living in a house above the water with all her family – all living as fishermen.”
The first hub was established in Balikpapan in the province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. It has gradually expanded since then, partially through the help of funding rounds that provided the capital it needed.
The continued expansion has allowed Aruna to become a steady supplier of crab to the U.S. market. At SENA, the company announced it is now in a strategic partnership with North Coast Seafoods, a Boston-based wholesaler.
“North Coast Seafoods has an extensive history of sourcing Asian blue swimming crab,” North Coast Seafoods Marketing Manager Christian L’Heureux told SeafoodSource. “The strategic partnership allows us to address the challenges in the U.S. and global markets with volatility and instability – not only in the supply of unpasteurized crab meat but also the stability of pricing.”
He said the partnership benefits North Coast’s customers by giving the company access to a steady stream of supply, rather than the “stop-and-go” method that suppliers can experience given the volatility of the blue swimming crab supply chain.
“The quality is always there; the product is a premium product 100 percent,” L’Heureux said. “This, in addition to the added transparency and traceability throughout the entire supply chain, is another really valuable aspect we appreciate.”
The strategic partnership also allows North Coast to be certain of the origins of its crab and can even help the company predict future supplies.
“The technology is also, long term, going to help us be able to forecast if there is a shortage on a certain type of crab meat, and it will help us to predict with a little more certainty when that will come back in stock,” L’Heureux said. “Not to say that there wasn’t traceability through the supply chain before the partnership, but there’s just this added level that’s pretty novel, new, and revolutionary – not to sound too dramatic – especially within this market.”
