At the same time, consumers are becoming conscious of the environmental and societal impact their food has in its original locale, and want assurances that producers are honoring ethical commitments. In short, producers are being held to higher standards of transparency than ever before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dev.techhq.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/8576233653_ab0fb3b2fd_k-723x1024.jpg\")
A poster advert from Switzerland in the 1950s. Source Nestl\u00e9<\/p>\n
Established over 150 years ago, Nestl\u00e9 is the biggest food manufacturer in the world. In 2019, the Swiss headquartered giant sold more than US$80 billion<\/a> worth of food produce across 187 countries. Nestl\u00e9\u00a0has 403 factories around the world, out of which come some of the world\u2019s most recognisable brands, including household names like Nescaf\u00e9, global icons like Perrier and local favourites like NaturNes and Milo.<\/p>\n Essentially a pillar of the world\u2019s supermarket supply chain, then, this market-leader is held to yet higher standards than most.<\/p>\n Nestl\u00e9 embraces blockchain<\/p>\n The Swiss food giant is investing significant resources into innovations that make tracking a product\u2019s journey as simple, easy and standardized as flipping a bag of chips and checking its ingredients. Blockchain is one such technology that\u2019s helping it do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over the course of several years to date, Nestl\u00e9 has made considerable progress in unearthing blockchain\u2019s potential. The group is a founding member of the IBM Food Trust \u2013 a SaaS solution that provides users with immediate access to actionable food supply chain data. That includes the complete history and current location of any individual food item, as well as accompanying information such as certifications, test data and temperature data, which can all be readily available in seconds once uploaded onto the blockchain. <\/p>\n Last year, Nestl\u00e9 \u2018broke ground<\/a>\u2019 in supply chain transparency through a collaboration with blockchain platform OpenSC \u2013 becoming the first major food and beverage company to announce that it will pilot open blockchain technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n Benjamin Dubois<\/a> is tasked with managing the digital transformation of Nestl\u00e9\u2019s supply chain, and has overseen introduction of blockchain technology at the firm over the last several years with the aim of enhancing customer trust \u2013 the goal is to enable them to make a clear judgement at the point of purchase. Reflecting on his employer\u2019s current progress, Dubois described the firm\u2019s exploration into blockchain as somewhat of a \u201cjourney\u201d itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have looked at other legacy technologies to do the same thing [\u2026] the problem we had is that there is no technology that was flexible enough, that had the level of trust and immutability.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Outside of the food sector, blockchain is fast proving its value in the supply chain tracking<\/a>. Today, nearly all the world\u2019s leading companies have advanced digital infrastructure, such as computerized enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management software. But while products are tracked from their earliest origins \u2013 from connected manufacturing equipment to digital shipping notices and RFID scanning \u2013 there are \u2018analog gaps\u2019 between systems that even these advanced solutions can\u2019t keep watch over.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a result, most companies have only limited visibility and insight into where all their products are at any given moment. With blockchain, companies can own a real-time and immutable digital ledger of transactions and movements for all participants in their supply chain network. The structure of the technology ensures that each player along the food value chain would generate and securely share data points, with labels that clarify ownership, creating an accountable and traceable system that no other technology can match.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBlockchain is a decentralized solution,\u201d said Dubois. \u201cIt\u2019s about creating this independent and auditable flow of data along our value chain \u2013 every actor has the responsibility to upload the data [\u2026] we are responsible for our parts; we can convey that to the consumer and they can be assured of the genuineness of what they see.<\/p>\n \u201cThe consumer knows that the data uploaded by the farmer has not been subsequently changed by someone else,\u201d Dubois continued. \u201cWe can consolidate the data we have in silos, and show it to the consumer so that they can make their own judgement.\u201d<\/p>\n Blockchain in tracing sustainability<\/p>\n While many companies, including US retail and grocery giant Walmart<\/a>, are turning to blockchain\u2019s power in traceability to tackle the very real and very dangerous issue of food contamination, blockchain technology could have a transformative impact on sustainability and the environmental impact of our global food supply, especially when combined with certifications and data from independent environmental groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n Palm oil, a common ingredient in food today, is responsible for huge amounts of deforestation across the planet. While 17% of producers claim to be sustainable<\/a>, the palm oil supply chain remains opaque, making it difficult for regulators to verify claims of sustainability, and for consumers to trust they are buying ethical products. Just one way blockchain could help is by securely storing signed satellite imagery as part of the individual product\u2019s data, which could ensure \u2018deforestation free\u2019 products are honoring their commitments. In concert with other technologies such as machine learning, image recognition algorithms could trigger an alert system if a pattern of deforestation is identified.\u00a0<\/p>\n In efforts to crackdown on illegal and unsustainable fishing practices, meanwhile, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and tech companies ConsenSys and TraSeable have deployed a blockchain partnership in the Pacific Islands tuna industry that will use blockchain technology to track the journey of tuna from \u201cbait to plate\u201d<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n This April, Nestl\u00e9 used blockchain to track the origin of its luxury coffee brand Zo\u00e9gas, a blend made from arabica coffee beans from Brazil, Rwanda and Colombia and roasted in Sweden. By scanning a QR code, buyers can access blockchain-recorded data including information about the coffee\u2019s separate origins, its farmers, time of harvest, transaction certificate for the specific shipments, as well as the roasting period. The coffee, and the process behind its production, is fully-certified by the Rainforest Alliance.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is now an incredibly complex \u201cconveyor belt of data\u201d available from our food supply chains, said Dubois \u2013 all of which when woven together provides rich insight into the journey of our food. While Nestl\u00e9, and other members of the food industry, are at the beginning of their journey, blockchain is enabling the consolidation of this data, providing for the first time the potential for a single and accurate top down view of the supply chain.\u00a0<\/p>\n Given Nestl\u00e9\u2019s seemingly endless product lines across the world, Dubois does not expect to be able to make traceability as advanced as the current trial with Zo\u00e9gas for every single commodity. But he is adamant that blockchain, for now, is a crucial component in continuing to evolve the company\u2019s mission, and it can serve as an example in the process.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe food marketplace is evolving and we have this scale of operation, providing this healthy food throughout the world \u2013 but it\u2019s about showing consumers where we\u2019re sourcing it and what we put in place to ensure that you know that food is good and healthy,\u201d Dubois said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look at the purpose of Nestl\u00e9 \u2013 to unlock the power of food and enhance the quality of life for everyone \u2013 I think technology and data and transparency is critical to that, so that consumers can trust what they buy.\u201d<\/p>\n We can raise a glass to that.<\/p>\n Mark is a former Editor of TechHQ.com, a publication with the objective of putting the newest and most relevant of enterprise tech on the radar of SMEs from all industries. Prior to joining the Hybrid Media team, Mark wrote about blockchain, martech and the idiosyncratic world of performance marketing.<\/p>\n View all posts <\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Popular belief has it that the clinking of glasses before a drink came from medieval times. Wine was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[126],"tags":[7025,3186,199,17253,17539],"class_list":["post-46062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nestle","tag-blockchain","tag-digital-transformation","tag-nestle","tag-operations","tag-supply-chain"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116370969991097658","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dev.techhq.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/shutterstock_700117189.jpg\")
Palm oil plantations are a major driver of the world\u2019s deforestation. Source: Shutterstock<\/p>\n![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/b2d8d9cf0113c25bd3c5c560821f26e343949c8d3b4cba81598e2903c136c6cb.png\")
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