The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has announced the successful completion of an experiment that involved the use of blockchain technology in tracking shipments across borders.
A press release on Monday confirmed that the multinational bank has moved 17 tonnes of almonds from Melbourne Australia to Hamburg, Germany and monitored the entire supply chain using an Ethereum-based blockchain system.
Aside from distributed ledger technology, the new platform developed by the CBA for the supply chain tracking experiment also integrated IoT and smart contracts which “provided a greater level of transparency and efficiency regarding the location, condition, and authentication of the goods being transported.”
Using IoT devices, for instance, partners with the project could view and track the location of shipments in real-time and also take note of the temperature and humidity of products packed inside the containers.
Participating nodes in the private blockchain experiment would include companies such as agriculture producer Olam Orchards, port operator Patrick Terminals, the Port of Melbourne and logistic carriers who worked with a high ‘level of data’ generated throughout the supply chain.
The platform created by the Commonwealth Bank “digitizes three key areas of global trade – operations, documentation and finance by housing the container information, completion of tasks and shipping documents, on a purpose-built blockchain.”
Speaking on their ambitions with the new platform, Chris Scougall, Managing Director of Industrial and Logistics in Client Coverage, of the Commonwealth Bank said,
We believe that blockchain can help our partners reduce the burden of administration on their businesses and enable them to deliver best-in-class services to their customers.
Blockchain technology has no doubt showed that it could deliver the future of global trade by improving transparency and efficiency across the supply chain. For this reason, world-class companies such as Alibaba and Boeing are already exploring ways to use blockchain-based solutions to improve their services.
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