Bunge, a leading global agribusiness and food company, and Bangkok Produce Merchandising Plc, a subsidiary of Charoen Pokphand Foods Plc (CPF), are jointly testing a traceability platform for sustainable soy using blockchain technology.
To date, three shipments totalling 185,000 metric tonnes of deforestation-free soybean meal were loaded in Brazil and are on their way to Thailand, allowing CPF to trace the soybeans from farm origin, through the processing and transport process to delivery at the destination.
Three more ships carrying an additional 180,000 metric tonnes of soybean meal are expected to be transported to Thailand by July 2024.
Paisarn Kruawongvanich, chief executive of Bangkok Produce Merchandising, said the company is 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 soybean meal verified deforestation-free, fully traceable from farms to their destination in Thailand for CPF. This marks a significant milestone for CPF to achieve 100% deforestation-free supply chains by 2025," he said.
Rossano de Angelis Jr, vice-president of agribusiness in South America for Bunge, said: "Adding a layer of blockchain technology improves the transparency in end-to-end traceability that Bunge has used for some years. This ability to increase consumer confidence in soy projects is only possible thanks to the robust supplier's socio-environmental verification and monitoring system that we structured over the last decade, which uniquely positions us to provide the connection of proven sustainable products with markets where the demand for them is increasing."
The two companies have been collaborating 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 destined for several countries in Asia, where Bangkok Produce Merchandising and CPF produce and sell feed and food.
The ongoing tests aim to automate the connection between Bunge and Bangkok Produce Merchandising's supplier management and socio-environmental monitoring systems with a digital platform. This enables the customer to monitor and receive product traceability data, in addition to accessing socio-environmental information from the sourced farms.
The blockchain technology ensures an additional layer of reliability, as it makes data immutable once it enters the platform.
Since the end of 2022, Bunge's supplier monitoring system covers more than 16,000 farms and around 20 million hectares in South America and features state-of-the-art satellite technology, capable of identifying changes in land use and soybean planting on each monitored property.