First Mile 2025 Update: Building stronger foundations at origin

It’s been another busy and exciting year for our First Mile team! Across the business, The First Mile Programme has been implementing key tools to support our operations at origin, including Integrity powered by BanQu, our new mapping tool ECOMMaps, and Power BI reports that enable origins to access their compliance data. In other words, there has been a lot happening! 

We now have 12 ECOM operations live on the BanQu platform, and 7 operations live on ECOMMaps, with more underway. 

Together, these projects are designed to strengthen ECOM's competitive position by improving our reporting capabilities, helping us meet client requirements in a streamlined way, and enabling compliant trading across our supply chains. 

Integrity Powered by BanQu 

What do you know about Integrity Powered by BanQu? 

Integrity powered by BanQu is used at farms and collection centres to capture farmer and farm-level data, as well as global and origin-specific survey information. Importantly, it goes beyond sustainability data. The platform also allows us to register and record farmer-level transactions, digitising traceability at the earliest stages of our supply chain – a first for ECOM at a global level! Each step of a transaction is recorded using blockchain technology, giving us auditable and easily accessible traceability data to meet client and regulatory requirements. 

So far, BanQu has been rolled out in 12 of our operations, and now has over 2,700 users added to the platform! Since its kick-off, we have collected valuable feedback from our Champion Super Users on what they would like to see next in BanQu to make their day-to-day operations easier. This has led to 30 new functionalities currently being rolled out, to ensure the platform meets our business, client and reporting needs in the best way possible. 

A huge well done to our latest Origins to Go-Live on Integrity powered by BanQu – Ecuador, Indonesia, Kenya and Nicaragua! 

Where are we so far? 

We are really excited to watch these numbers grow throughout 2026 and beyond! 

ECOMMaps is our ECOM-supported mapping tool for Origins that need an easy-to-use app containing enhanced quality checks for improved polygon collection. This allows our teams to map farms with ease, using a tablet or a phone. Data then integrates with our Data Lake for deforestation compliance checks and the BanQu platform to support our end-to-end traceability ambitions.  

In 2025, the First Mile team have worked with 6 operations to help them Go-Live and adopt ECOMMaps for their mapping activities: Indonesia, Vietnam, Peru, Mexico Cocoa, Guatemala, Nigeria Cocoa. Mexico Coffee is also underway, and planning to Go-Live soon!  

First Mile 

What’s next? 

Rollouts of both Integrity powered by BanQu and ECOMMaps will continue throughout 2026, and we’ll keep supporting our live countries as they use the new platforms to meet their business requirements and ECOM’s digitisation ambitions. Our Champions Networks for both platforms will continue. This ensures live Origins keep a touchpoint with the First Mile team, and provides a continuous feedback cycle on platform usage and performance  

Look out for the new First Mile SharePoint page coming soon, which will keep you up to date on the latest news from First Mile project rollouts and more!  

Lastly, a big thank you to everyone who has collaborated to help ECOM’s digitisation ambitions come to life throughout this year – in First Mile, Origin teams and broader business functions, it wouldn’t be possible without your hard work!  

Wishing you a happy and healthy 2026!