Italian extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) producer, Certified Origins Italia, is expanding its use of blockchain technology to track and trace its products, reported Enterprise Times on 1 April.
“We believe that buyers and growers deserve a world in which authenticity and quality are not only valued but verified,” said Andrea Biagianti, chief information officer of Certified Origins.
“Managing traceability with blockchain technology is the logical progression of the whole traceability process for our Bellucci Premium Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
“We are using Oracle Blockchain to track shipments of our EVOO from our bottling facility in Italy to the port of arrival in the USA.
Biagianti said the Oracle blockchain platform easily integrated with its partners’ systems, and the next step was to create smart contracts between supply and distribution players, thereby reducing operational costs.”
"The further evolution of our blockchain system will be the accurate and precise management of the smart contract in order to give the system the automatic method of evaluating production choices," Biagianti said. "The assessments that today are performed by the operator will be performed by the smart contract and this will allow the team to spend more time for operational and quality checks."
ComputerWorld describes a smart contract as a blockchain-based business automation tool that executes against pre-determined rules based on embedded code. For example, once a cargo shipment is acknowledged as received from a shipper, payment can automatically be transferred from a bank to the manufacturer and/or the shipping company.
According to Enterprise Times, the application of blockchain technology in the food industry to provide greater supply chain transparency is becoming increasingly common, with examples such as the IBM Food Trust and the Chinese Blockchain Food Safety Alliance.
