Certificates

In the last years, a wide variety of certification schemes associated with products has emerged to increase the visibility of the product journey along the SC (Francisconi, 2017).

The end-customer demands on product integrity, related to fairness and authenticity of the product in its SC, has promoted the generation of several quality, provenance, fair trade and organic certifications. Currently, these certification standards involve the audi-tion of large amount of informaaudi-tion related with the product through the SC by trusted third parties to certify that the products meet with the scheme’s requirements from the origin to the final consumer (NEPCon, 2017; Ge, et al., 2017). In this context, the infor-mation required for audition and the one generated to record the certificate verification

rely on paper-based chain of custody systems, not integrated in a common database (NEPCon, 2017). This entire process is highly inefficient due to lack of digitalization and system integration, costly and prone to fraud, corruption and errors (Ge, et al., 2017).

To solve part of these inefficiencies, in the study case 5, Provenance together with IPNLF and Humanity Reunited associations have worked in a 6-months pilot ran from January to June 2016, about tracking fish caught by fishermen with verified social sustainability.

The pilot consisted on 3 phases as is shown in the ¡Error! No se encuentra el origen de la referencia.. The main goal of this pilot was to enforce the proof of compliance to standards throughout the SC, prevent double spending of certificates and exploring the opportunities of blockchain and IoT for enhancing product transparency. Given the cur-rent challenges in effective interoperability and data sharing along the SC, the blockchain appears as perfect opportunity to share the same truth between all the SC stakeholders, without giving any of them a backdoor to the system. This pilot consisted on a new method for enabling a secure flow of information and allowing a fully accessible chain of custody, including key social attributes such as fishing method, vessel type and com-pliance data (Provenance, 2016).

The pilot was tested in Indonesia, which is the largest tuna-producing country, and it was focused in two tuna SCs: yellowfin and skipjack tuna fish, from fisherman to export stage.

In an initial research phase, the opportunities for digitalization of SC data and it transfer were analyzed by interviewing all the stakeholders involved. The first stage of the pilot was focused on the data collection and registration from the first mile. Daily catch is registered as new asset, with unique ID, on the blockchain when the fishermen sent a SMS message. In this way, the assets become linked to the fishermen as the owner in the blockchain. When the assets are transferred on sale from fisherman to supplier, the trans-action is digitally registered on the blockchain and the change of title of ownership is also updated. On the other hand, the verification of social and environmental conditions for the fishermen in the capture point is done by a trusted local NGOs, whose audit systems were compliance to an external standard. The certification records are stored in the block chain associated to each fishermen activities (Provenance, 2016).

In the second phase of the pilot, the focus was on linking the blockchain with current ERP and other SC systems. The blockchain technology is interoperable by default due to the data is stored in the ledger as an address that can be accessed by any entity though the QR code or the RFID tag attached to the item. When a transaction or transformation is devel-oped in the physical layer, it is also recorded in the blockchain associated to the unique ID of the asset. To manage the transformation of items along the SC, a smart contract was employed. The triggered condition to execute it consisted on the mass balancing to ac-count the amounts of ingredients used in the transformation. As a result of the smart con-tract, the identifier encoded in the label of the transformed product appeared, which will

be passed with it through the chain. Lastly, the transformed products that leave the man-ufacturer as outputs are also register in the blockchain by scanning their labels (Provenance, 2016).

Figure 22: Provenance pilot about tracking tuna supply chain (Provenance, 2016)

Finally, the last phase of the pilot was related to make accessible to end-customers the records stored in the blockchain. Through smart stickers and packaging based on NFC tags, shoppers can hover their smartphones over a product to track its provenance on their screens (Provenance, 2016).

In September 2017, Provenance conducted another pilot in collaboration with the Soil Association (study case 7) based on an interactive certification version supported by blockchain technology (Provenance, 2017). This world’s first digital certification mark consisted on a blockchain where the most important product claims and certificates can be recorded and viewed in real time, creating an auditable record. The link of the Soil Association Certification’s databases with the blockchain provides a single source of truth where key verified data and batches of product are stored throughout the product’s jour-ney from farm to store. This information is accessible by hovering a mobile phone over the NFC-powered mark on the product package, allowing shoppers to see information including the certification’s validity, the organic criteria met by the product, a map of its journey, and even photographs from the farm (Searle, 2017). During the pilot, the inter-active certification was well received by shoppers in-store, who intuitively used Prove-nance to access information about organic products, increasing customer engagement (Provenance, 2017).

Other study case related with certification is the number 4, which is conducted by Wa-geningen Economic Research and TNO. In the pilot study report released in November 2017, the findings of the PoC started in March 2017 were described. The aim of this pilot was to keep track of different certificates involved in the table grapes SC from South Africa using a blockchain. The boxes of grapes are stored in the blockchain using a unique identification number. On the other hand, the organic table grapes are produced on a farm in South Africa that needs a certification for the individual boxes of grapes it produces, so an accreditation authority is necessary to sign an organic certificate to the farm. After certifying these grapes, they are shipped to a reseller in Europe, where they are sold to supermarkets or retailers. Each time the grapes change ownership is recorded in the block-chain. All parties involved can access to the blockchain, verify the validity of the organic certificate, and track the provenance. If non-compliance with the certification schemes is discovered during an audit, the certification authorities can revoke the certification issued to the farm and it will be recorded in the blockchain. As a result, this pilot has demon-strated that it is feasible to put basic information concerning certificates on a blockchain (Ge, et al., 2017).