Trackback sweetens mānuka honey deliveries with blockchain

Auckland based Trackback has used blockchain technology to confirm the provenance of a shipment of New Zealand's Manuka honey to customers in China.

Trackback said it had been able to verify all events along the supply chain, as well as evidence of the honey producer's testing protocol by recording these on the blockchain, so recipients in China could be certain the jars of honey they received were those packaged in New Zealand.

Trackback is now working towards a commercially available technology able to secure the authenticity, integrity and provenance of New Zealand made premium products.

It said the demonstration had been achieved through collaboration with state owned quality assurance provider AsureQuality and NZ Post using mānuka honey from The True Honey Co.

Trackback's announcement made no mention of Sylo, which announced in October 2018 that it was partnering with Trackback to develop "a solution to combat the trillions of dollars of counterfeit items traded worldwide," that would "change the game for New Zealand exporters."

Sylo said the partnership would see Trackback using its communications and payments platform to drive real-time tracking technology and "provide a user-friendly solution enabling consumers to pay for and then reliably follow exported products through the entire supply chain."

Export of honey to New Zealand was mentioned specifically, Sylo said: "For premium New Zealand exports such as wine, milk and honey, expectations and stakes are high, as are the costs of ensuring products are still what they say on the packet, when they reach dinner tables in countries such as China and the United States of America."

Their joint platform was scheduled to become available in the first half of 2019.

Trackback is also a member of the ecosystem of Centrality, which describes itself as "one of the leading, blockchain venture studios in the world, with a growing team of 90 people across Auckland, London, Melbourne and Singapore."

Sylo also announced last October a partnership with Centrality, saying: Sylo’s decentralised application (DApp) and communications and storage protocol will become the toolkit and user-access point for the Centrality ecosystem."

Food provenance a huge market

Trackback says there is a huge market for services able to confirm the provenance of food and other goods. "The Grocery Manufacturers Association in the United States estimates that the counterfeiting of global food and consumer products costs the industry $US10-$US15 billion per year."

It adds: "Counterfeit concerns are not confined to the food industry. According to the Global Brand Counterfeiting Report 2018, the amount of total counterfeiting globally reached $US1.2 trillion in 2017 and is bound to reach $US1.82 trillion by 2020."