How Clasen Quality Chocolate took control of its global cocoa supply chain

Casey Johannesen has spent ten years in supply chain. For most of that time, the day did not start with planning. It started with a hunt. Before he could think about anything ahead of him, Casey spent his mornings logging into carrier portals one by one, copying out container numbers and ETAs, and re-keying them into spreadsheets so the rest of the business had something to work from.

Casey is Cocoa Sourcing Manager at Clasen Quality Chocolate (CQC), a North American industrial chocolate and confectionery manufacturer whose ingredients sit behind some of the world's best known retail and Consumer Packaged Goods brands. Those partners expect consistency. That consistency depends on CQC knowing exactly where every container of cocoa is, and when it will land.

"Most mornings, before I could even think about the day ahead, I spent an hour chasing data to find out where my supply was. That work is genuinely gone now. Beacon is one place, one picture, and it updates itself. It's the tool I've been waiting for."

Casey Johannesen, Cocoa Sourcing Manager, Clasen Quality Chocolate

The information existed. It was just scattered.

CQC runs a high-volume cocoa import flow across multiple origins and long-haul ocean routes, spanning Asia-Pacific and Atlantic lanes. The data describing all of it was out there. The problem was where it lived: across separate carrier portals, inboxes, and spreadsheets, none of which talked to each other.

So every team rebuilt its own version of the picture. Finding the answer to a simple question, where is this container and when will it arrive, meant checking several systems and trusting that the manual copy between them had not introduced an error.

Four teams, four sets of numbers

The deeper cost was not the hour Casey lost each morning. It was what happened downstream. Sourcing, supply chain, production and finance were each working from different, and often inaccurate, numbers. When the underlying data is re-keyed by hand from portal to spreadsheet, small gaps and stale ETAs ripple outwards: into production schedules, into the commitments made to customers, into the figures finance plans against.

For a business where cocoa moves on long ocean transits from multiple origins, with variable carrier performance along the way, even small delays or data gaps reach the brands waiting on CQC's ingredients.

One workspace across every cocoa lane

CQC deployed Beacon across its upstream cocoa lanes. Container and ETA data that used to be scattered across portals and inboxes now updates automatically in one place. Sourcing, supply chain, production and finance see the same live picture of where the cocoa is, at the same time, without anyone having to assemble it by hand first.

The manual reconciliation that opened Casey's day has gone. The hour he spent chasing data is now spent acting on it.

Because a trusted and accurate overview is shared rather than rebuilt, CQC can also start using Live Boards to give each team and partner exactly the view that matters to them, without the back-and-forth of emails asking for an update. That same shared, accurate view of performance opens the door to working more closely and more efficiently with suppliers, an area CQC is now exploring as it builds on the foundation.

"CQC runs a serious, complex operation and holds itself to a high standard. Cocoa is one of the harder commodities to move, long ocean transits, multiple origins, variable carrier performance, and having one clean, live picture across all of that makes a real difference to how teams plan and respond."

Fraser Robinson, CEO and co-founder of Beacon

From bean to production, one version of reality

CQC built its reputation on quality, customer service and responsible sourcing, the principles behind its "Responsible Roots" programme of traceability and sustainability across the cocoa supply chain. Holding that standard depends on the business operating from accurate, current information rather than four competing copies of it.

That is the change Beacon delivered: not a new system to manage, but one live overview of the cocoa supply chain that every team can trust and act on.