New Kids on the Blockchain: Effect on perishables market

Branching out

At this wide-open stage of blockchain development in the cargo industry, anything seems possible. “Just as there are more uses for a web server than hosting a blog, there are many more uses for blockchain technology beyond crypto-currency,” said Hyperledger’s Kuhrt. “Any business network that records transactions – and can’t depend on a central proxy that everyone has to trust, and for which those ledgers must be immutable – can be remade through blockchain technology.”

For instance, the British forwarder MTI recently began using a public blockchain network, created by predictive analytics expert Black Swan Data Ltd. The product, called, appropriately, TrustMe, is part of Black Swan’s SolasVGM system. For MTI CEO Jody Cleworth, one of the major benefits of TrustMe will be its ability to create an automatic log of the verified gross mass (VGM) data of full containers.

Under the International Maritime Organization’s International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) regulations that went into effect last year, shippers are required to record accurate VGM data and give it to the terminal and carrier for every container. But with blockchain, this cumbersome requirement will be replaced by the TrustMe permanent record, which can be viewed at any time by port officials, shipping lines and cargo owners. “Instead of a VGM message being delivered sequentially to parties within the supply chain, our platform can provide a decentralized approach to delivering VGM messages,” Cleworth said.

Based on its track record in bitcoin, a popular crypto-currency, and fintech, the benefits of blockchain are slowly becoming noticed in other industries as a way to transform how people manage identities and personal information – all with transparency and a lack of bias, Kuhrt said.

“This is why industries as diverse as agriculture, finance, medical, real estate, electricity, and diamonds are giving it a go,” she added. “It’s not too crazy to think that, in the next five years, nearly every Fortune 500 company will be transacting on a distributed ledger, and automating their processes using smart contracts.”