Mondra launches AI assistant Sherpa to power grocers towards net zero

Mondra, the platform for global food system decarbonisation, has launched an AI-powered assistant for food retailers to assess the environmental impact and resilience of their supply chains.

Sherpa – a chatbot built using Microsoft Azure OpenAI’s secure servers – helps retailers calculate how much CO2 is produced in the making of their private-label and branded products, down to the ingredient level.

Mondra’s platform uses AI-technologies to create digital twins of food supply chains. It monitors more than 60,000 products, over one million unique ingredients, and serves 85% of the UK grocery retail market.

As retailers face the challenge of reducing their carbon footprints to meet net zero targets, Sherpa promises to be a powerful tool, particularly when it comes to the carbon emissions produced by their suppliers – so-called ‘Scope 3 emissions.’

Jason Barrett, Mondra’s CEO, said: “Mondra’s approach to collaborative decarbonisation is ground-breaking.

“We are essentially giving retailers the platform and tools to support planet-positive category evolution, while de-risking their business and taking advantage of the commercial opportunity presented by the net zero economy.”

Reducing emissions

For the first time, Mondra’s platform automates ‘Life Cycle Assessment’ at scale, enabling food retailers to understand the environmental impact of every product they sell. Sherpa enables retailers to interrogate all this complex data easily using natural language.

As an example, retailers can quickly see what impact changing the ingredient formulation of a ready meal would have on its overall CO2 emissions. One customer reformulated a lasagne and managed to reduce the carbon emitted in its production by 18%.

This level of visibility is unprecedented in the food retail sector.

Sherpa also helps retailers assess what happens if certain ingredients are sourced from different parts of the world, enabling them to build greater resilience into supply chains that are often susceptible to climate change, natural disaster and war.

Alison Wright, Small Business Lead, Microsoft UK, said: “Mondra’s groundbreaking chatbot Sherpa – built using Microsoft AI technology – will be a powerful tool in the fight against climate change.

“Being able to map food supply chain carbon emissions, then make data-driven decisions on how to reduce them, will radically improve the retail food industry’s ability to meet its net zero targets.”

‘Data-driven decisions‘  

Mondra is also working with Non-Governmental Organisations, the UK Government, and the British Retail Consortium, to establish a unified standard for measuring product level performance and farm data, and ensure that accurate, comparable data is collected in the most efficient way.  

Marco De Sanctis, Chief Technical Officer, Mondra, said: “The overlay of Sherpa onto the Mondra platform is game-changing for the industry.

“Its querying ability will empower businesses to make data-driven decisions, reducing their environmental impact and improving operational efficiency.”