A month later, due to demand from within China, they joined forces with Chinese media platform ChainNews and Winkrypto to release the report in Chinese. The report made a dramatic impression, being picked up by news aggregators such as Toutiao (Owned by Bytedance), Sohu, and other financial media outlets. This coverage is important in reaching a domestic food industry looking to integrate technology to further improve food safety standards.
Like the English version, the Chinese version featured a detailed look at the technical requirements needed to integrate VeChain, an overview of possible data points, and case studies including My Story from DNV GL and VeChain.
For many “partnerships” in the blockchain space, a new announcement doesn’t always mean what the community would expect. Facts are often overstated, raising investor expectations while little action is actually seen on the blockchain. This week’s major announcement that VeChain would be the public chain infrastructure of Sam’s Club in China might have been no different, except for one key difference: the product is already on the shelves.
Making a case for Sam’s Club
While parent company Walmart China is a major whale in China’s retail industry, Sam’s Club is no minnow. COVID-19 has encouraged the Chinese marketplace to alter their buying patterns from daily shopping to less frequent bulk grocery shopping trips, a trend that has caused Sam’s Club to grow at a faster pace than regular Walmart outlets in China. This double-digit growth has caused Walmart Inc to announce the planned opening of 100 more Sam’s Clubs over the next 8 years.
Sam’s Club in Shenyang
Sam’s Club in China targets a higher class customer by carrying bulk imported items that focus on quality and safety. Having a members-only policy makes the brand feel exclusive, with a yearly fee of around $35 (US) just to make a purchase. Their signature Member’s Mark stamp is applied to products sold throughout the store, with in-store marketing featuring the country of origin and other provenance data, making it an ideal use case for blockchain solutions.
Member’s Mark marketing on display
High ceilings, stacked products, and over-sized shopping carts encourage the shopping spree mentality
So are they using VeChain or not?
Sam’s Club members are no stranger to technology – the membership is registered through a WeChat Mini-program, and many products throughout the store have QR codes offering more information. Their online service offers home delivery in under one hour, a major attraction for consumers, especially in a country still cautious about potential virus infections.
After a quick look around Shenyang’s spacious Sam’s Club, it didn’t take long to find products tagged with the Blockchain Food Safety & Traceability QR Codes (powered by VeChain’s ToolChain). An entire freezer section of fresh chicken meat from Tyson Foods was tagged. The QR codes shared the details of the product’s journey from being raised and processed in China’s Shandong province to the store in Liaoning’s capital city. It’s worth noting that Tyson Foods China was established in 2001 and is a subsidiary of the US company Tyson Foods.
This entire freezer of Tyson’s chicken products was tagged with VeChain-linked QR codes
Screenshots of the blockchain traceability landing page
It’s clear that efforts from Sam’s Club to validate products from third-party suppliers is swinging into force. A glance at vechainstats.com shows that daily data clauses on weekdays are now routinely over 100k – a marked increase over the inconsistency of previous months. As the traceability program continues to roll out and cover more products, an optimistic outlook becomes more probable over the coming months.
Access to safe and nutritious food is key to maintaining physical and mental well-being as well as socioeconomic development.
Unsafe food strains healthcare systems and harms national economies, tourism and trade. The WHO estimates that food-borne diseases are responsible for 600 million people falling ill and 420,000 deaths every year and, according to market research agency Markets and Markets, the global food safety testing market will reach US$24 billion by 2023.
With rising demand for a transparent and better controlled food supply chain, producers are pressured to invest in new technology to stay ahead. Ensuring food safety however, is not an easy task. Supply chains are globally interconnected so good collaboration between governments, producers and consumers is required.
These challenges were the focus of VeChain’s 3rd webinar – hosted by Sarah Nabaa, VeChain’s VP for SE Asia & Australasia, and David Inderias, CEO of Fresh Supply Co and member of the APAC Provenance Council.
“Like building your own car” – David Inderias reveals the pointless nature of private chains
David Inderias, the vocal founder of Fresh Supply Co, isn’t known for beating around the bush. On May 13th, he co-hosted the VeChain Bootcamp alongside VeChain Southeast Asia & Australia GM Sarah Nabaa. As two founding members of the APAC Provenance Council, they were well-positioned to educate the audience on the challenges the industry faces in convincing producers and manufacturers to digitize their supply chains.
Inderias is under no delusions about the task at hand, and unlike others in the space, doesn’t have blockchain adoption as a primary concern. Instead he is focused on bringing value to his customers, whether it’s through blockchain, IoT, digital product identity services, or his ultimate wild card, improved trade finance. The APAC Provenance Council uses Mastercard and Alipay to decrease the time it takes b2b farmers to get paid for their labors, with one caveat – supply chain and provenance info must be verified. To do that, Inderias has entrusted VeChain as the main provider.
This is because he sees little value in building a private network himself, a strategy pushed heavily by large firms like IBM Blockchain and select Big Four accounting firms. He points out that companies in the past did this merely to “check a few boxes” and show their innovative side, without considering the value it brings. He compared it to building your own car, in the sense that it might be a commendable feat on its own, but leaves all kinds of questions regarding whether or not it can perform well enough out on the road. With a number of reliable and exceptional car companies on the market, why bother?
The exceptional car company in this metaphor is VeChain’s ToolChain, which Inderias claims allows him to quickly customize and iterate solutions for a wide range of producers and their vastly different needs. Sarah Nabaa recalled how at their first meeting, David was skeptical that VeChain might be a competitor – now he recognizes that they are one of the few companies with enough credibility and functionality to be trusted in the APAC Provenance Council.
Still, Inderias was pragmatic about the steps that would need to be taken. He wasn’t about to rush out and force solutions down a client’s neck, insisting that properly designing, assessing and reassessing the solution would be necessary to make sure it was done intelligently, and that it provided the most possible value to his paying customers. He laughed about cryptocurrency communities on the internet who often push blockchain projects to show transactions, stating “If you think it’s easy, why don’t you try and sell it [the solution].” He continued to say that his customers include ranchers and family-owned farms that have been operating profitably for multiple generations. “They don’t need you. They don’t think they need you. You better have a very clear explanation of why they need to change”.
Understanding that mentality is key to how Inderias runs his business, especially in an era plagued by COVID-19. He claims to be a technophile, but is aware that most of his customers aren’t. ToolChain allows him to skip the cryptocurrency and technical side and get right to the important stuff – helping his customers improve business processes.
Food supply chain strategies in post-COVID19 world
Sarah kept the pace going throughout the webinar with her own perspective on enterprise adoption. Drawing from her experience with clients, she shared the typical steps involved in a typical ToolChain project and explained how VeChain’s SaaS interface helps managers make better informed decisions.
Typical steps for a process builder project
In her view, the benefits of blockchain should not be restricted to the food industry and should rather be adopted by other industries to disrupt key areas like manufacturing, supply-chain visibility and automation, digitising chain of custodies and sustainability.
