Seafood

Currently Blockchain Technology (BCT) is used in limited capacity in the food industry primarily to trace and record transactions in order to strengthen management, safety, and quality systems. In Europe, food retailers and manufacturers (such as Carrefour and Nestle) are maximising their ability to trace food products to each individual ingredient to reduce the complexity and potential for confusion through tools such as QR codes and product labelling. A French retail group, Auchan Retail, uses BCT to improve supply chain (SC) traceability.

Through the use of QR codes BCT provides consumers direct and comprehensive information regarding producers, processors, operators, member records and product information, thereby influencing their buying behaviour.

Recently, IBM in collaboration with Barilla, has leveraged blockchain through its pilot project guaranteeing provenance and product quality information regarding raw materials of food products. WWF has partnered with “Viant”, a Consensys incubated company, and “Sea Quest Fiji Ltd.”, a progressive tuna longline fishing company operating in Fiji, to prove blockchain SC traceability for use in tuna traceability in Fijian longline fishery.

Most of the above platforms do well when it comes to providing a Blockchain platform, but they lack in the aspects of:

1. Providing an all-round solution: For a strong traceability solution, a combination of technology with the right implementation of cases is required. As shown in the diagrams below, Shine combines IoT, analytics, and Blockchain technology to provide an all-round solution to scallop traceability.

2. Integrating the right economic incentives: To implement a new system, all stakeholders (fishing companies, primary producers, secondary producers, auditors, waste management companies, brands, retailers) need to see benefits through either: (a) cost saving; or (b) increase in revenues. Shine has inbuilt incentive mechanisms through which retailers and brands can show customers the history of the product, thereby, enhancing brand value and an increasing the price of a product. Part of this increased sales revenue flows down to the fishing companies automatically using Shine’s Blockchain smart contracts.

3. Blockchain platform innovation: SHINE innovates on the middleware layer (often ignored on all blockchain implementations) to enable ease of: (a) use; (b) deployment; and (c) running the platform. Shine implements a simple “plug-and-play model” with no upfront costs and only a transaction fee-based model.

SHINE makes it easy for any supply chain to meet their supply chain goals: firms can authenticate product in real time, firms can meet their sustainability goals through real time monitoring of waste disposal, firms can ensure source verification of their products. SHINE provides a business friendly blockchain platform which eliminates all technical complexity required to run a Blockchain.

There are five layers to any Blockchain platform implementation: a. The Blockchain itself which could be Hyperledger, Ethereum, R3 Corda. b. The middle layer – Account management, micro-services, APIs, Input of user data and outside market data into the Blockchain, maintenance of the Blockchain nodes. c. The front-end user experience and user interface. d. The IoT sensors sending data to the Blockchain. e. The Machine learning layer to analyse the data for each party.

Most Blockchain implementations focus only on the Blockchain layer while ignoring the other layers such as:

1. Full-stack Blockchain: SHINE comes as a full-stack solution - backend databases, Blockchain, front-end web-app and mobile app. This enables ease of use for any kind of supply chain traceability that would be required.

2. Mobile+Web: SHINE has a layer on top of the Blockchain which analyses data coming from the blockchain into dashboards and shows admins and each user of the system.

3. IoT sensors: Shine comes with IoT sensors as part of its offering which seamlessly integrates with the supply chain to measure temperature, humidity, proximity, pH, chemicals, and other required metrics.

4. AI/Machine-Learning: SHINE enables the integration of AI/ML for supply chain participants to make smart decisions on aspects such as demand forecasting.

The cost to companies implementing the solution is optimal and quick due to Shine’s “Software-as-a-Service” model that runs on only a per-transaction system and customization fee, but without a development fee.