Global agribusiness giant Bunge Global and feed ingredient firm Bangkok Produce (BKP) have jointly tested a soyabean tracing platform using blockchain technology.
The test involved three shipments from Brazil totalling 185,000 tonnes of deforestation-free soyabean meal for delivery to Thailand, Bunge said on 11 June.
Through the shipments, Thailand food conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) said it would be able to trace the soyabeans from farm origin, processing and transportation to delivery at destination. CPF is the parent company of BKP.
Three additional ships were due to deliver 180,000 tonnes of soyabean meal by July.
Grown in high-priority regions with zero deforestation since 2020, the products comply with both companies’ socio-environmental supplier verification protocols.
In addition to compliance with a range of socio-environmental criteria, the platform offered customers access to information including the carbon footprint of volumes sold and details of regenerative agricultural practices adopted by farms, Bunge said.
BKP CEO Paisarn Kruawongvanich said the company was working to connect blockchain-based traceability solutions with suppliers, partners and farmers across the world, ensuring transparency across its supply chain.
“In the initial stages of our partnership with Bunge, we have shipped the first vessels of soyabean meal verified deforestation-free, fully traceable from farms to their destination in Thailand for CP Foods,” Kruawongvanich said.
“This marks a significant milestone for Charoen Pokphand Foods to achieve 100% deforestation-free supply chains by 2025.”
The two companies have been working in collaboration since October 2023, when they announced a partnership to develop technical, commercial and operational feasibility studies for a blockchain traceability solution aimed at building a sustainable and digitally integrated supply chain. The agreement involves oilseeds and their byproducts sourced by Bunge in Brazil for shipment to several countries in Asia, where BKP and CPF produce and sell feed and food.
The ongoing tests aimed to automate the connection between Bunge and BKP’s supplier management and socio-environmental monitoring systems with a digital platform, Bunge said. This would enable customers to monitor and receive product traceability data, in addition to accessing socio-environmental information from sourced farms, with the blockchain technology providing an additional layer of reliability.
Since the end of 2022, Bunge said its supplier monitoring system had covered more than 16,000 farms on around 20M ha of land in South America.
In Brazil, Bunge currently monitors its entire direct suppliers in areas at risk of deforestation and said it was also expecting to fully cover indirect suppliers in 2025. Bunge said that more than 97% of the soyabeans it sourced in Brazil was deforestation and conversion free, in line with the company’s goal of achieving deforestation-free chains in 2025.
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