IBM has achieved one of the largest enterprise project milestones, i.e. taking its food-tracking blockchain into production by signing with European supermarket giant Carrefour.
The commercial launch of IBM Food Trust announced on Monday, means that large players along with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the food industry supply chain, can join the network for a subscription fee ranging from between $100 and $10,000 per month.
Now that Carrefour, which operates over 12,000 stores in 33 countries, is on board- this gives an incentive to participate in the initiative. The tracking of Carrefour’s branded products in France, Span and Brazil will be done by the retailer, before expanding to other countries by 2022.
“For us, it’s a matter of sense for the consumer. It’s really this that will push us to say to our producers or partners or suppliers, will they come on the platform? It’s really consumer-orientated; it’s really for them that we are doing this.”, Emmanuel Delerm, blockchain program director at Carrefour told CoinDesk.
In spite of this, Carrefour is but the latest food company with a supply chain clout to sign up with the IBM Food Trust; others being Nestle, Dole Food, Tyson Foods, Kroger, Unilever and U.S. retailer behemoth Walmart.
The main intention of the IBM Food Trust commercial offering is the ability to trace items back and forth through the supply chain. Items can be traced back to the original source, in the sense that, apples in a juice can be pinpointed to a particular batch of orchards. In the event of a contamination, the trace can recall the whole range of products that might have been affected.
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