As published in a press release, the Ecuadorian dairy producer El Ordeño has declared its alliance with a blockchain-based system as part of a pilot program named IBM Food Trust.

According to the IBM News Room, the company aspires to utilize the blockchain to monitor its TRU dairy products, consolidating a new packaging model that involves QR codes.

By scanning the label with a mobile device, customers will be capable of tracking the complete journey of the specific dairy product in question, from the farm to the desk. Furthermore, it offers supplementary information about the producer, cold chains, quality centers, and distribution centers. 

Guilherme Franklin, El Ordeño’s chief operating officer, stated on the launch in the press release:

“We are constantly transforming the way we do business to ensure the best possible quality for all our products.”

Transparency and reliability

According to El Ordeño, the purpose of standardizing the complete distribution process is to accomplish greater transparency by the data distributed “safely and selectively.”

As for the advantage that such a system can cause to producers, the dairy manufacturer assures that the blockchain-based platform will assist in minimizing waste and deception within the process.

Martín Hagelstrom, the blockchain leader for IBM Latin America, emphasized the significance customers give to the origin and the path that the products they devour have driven, adding:

“IBM Food Trust provides El Ordeño with a single, immutable, and transparent source of information about how their milk products are distributed throughout the country. Most importantly, Food Trust allows consumers to access this information in real-time when they buy the products and to make purchase decisions based on the data.”

According to a study by El Telegrafo, Ecuador produces nearly 5 million liters of milk yearly, making revenues of $1.4 billion each year.

Food retailers such as Carrefour have already started implementing blockchain-based technologies for tracking food products such as fish or chicken.