The association will offer elaborate solutions for validating and monitoring food, wine and other produce utilizing blockchain, with a specific concentration on the $76 billion worth exports from Australia to China.
Trade funding will be done by MasterCard for goods shipped outside of China, while Alipay Australia will fund transactions related to shipment of goods into China.
Goods can be traced utilizing VeChain as the unpermissioned blockchain or MasterCard Provenance as the ledger which will necessitate permissions.
Supply chain monitoring was one of the top real-world use case specified in the Australian Government’s latest National Blockchain Roadmap. Notably, in 2019, Australia managed to garner 38% of overall exports to China in terms of value, staying ahead of all other countries.
With shutdown seriously impacting company cash flows, an exclusive selling strategy will be to facilitate “milestone” payments to several groups as goods move across different points of supply chain.
For illustration, 30% can be mechanically paid when blockchain documents a shipment that goes through customs process in Australia, 30% when the goods go through customs verification in China and rest of the payment on delivery. Real-time payments can be done utilizing credit to an electronic wallet, instead of holding on for a month for settlement.
David Inderia, the co-founder and CEO of Fresh Supply Co. and a major seller backing the Provenance Council, stated that Alipay and MasterCard paved way for instant payment facility for the association.
“[We offer] the ability to finance and facilitate payments instantly. We can get our clients paid faster, so that means paying by credit. Typically terms of trade is receipt plus 30 days, so it’s exciting to a lot of our clients who can get paid instantly.”
“So what we’re saying is we’re taking B2B, extremely large invoices and fronting them short term credit for 30 days. So you can hold on to your cash so you have more working capital. If I’m a purchaser like Alibaba, I don’t have to use real money, I can use credit, so long as I settle in 30 days. And the benefit of that is the producer gets paid quickly.”
Sunny Lu, CEO of VeChain, stated that the latest platform would be immensely valuable. Lu said “The implementation of blockchain technology certainly contributes to buffering the immediate economic impacts of the pandemic for enterprises, and will help improve productivity by unleashing more resources and growth opportunities.”
Other than blockchain and finance firms, the association also consists of food sector related organizations, agencies that stipulate standards, companies that provide packaging and labeling service.
The main commercial sellers supporting the Provenance Council are Australia based firms namely Laava (CSIRO-backed digital fingerprinting company), Fresh Supply Co., (supply chain integrations and middleware company) and Source Certain International (provenance validation firm).
Inderias stated that FSC is providing blockchain corroborated trade funding of $80,000 per week in collaboration with MasterCard for a key Australian dairy exporter and is preparing to embed one of the nation’s biggest sea food exporters generating hundreds of millions of dollars in export revenue per year.
Nicholas Giurietto, CEO of Blockchain Australia, also backed council, stating:
“The National Blockchain Roadmap identified agricultural supply chains as a key area where blockchain and adjacent technologies can transform our national capability. The formation of the APAC Provenance Council is a great step forward that will allow us to move forward with projects that will enhance the transparency, efficiency and management of agricultural and other supply chains.”