BrazilEY helps develop blockchain-based platform for wine industry
Global professional services firm Ernst & Young has been tapped by Blockchain Wine to build a blockchain solution for the international wine industry – with a focus on the Asian market.
Helping to trace the quality, provenance, and authenticity of new and vintage wines, the coming TATTOO Wine Platform from Singapore’s Blockchain Wine aims to better enable the promotion and sales of wines across Asia and beyond – with an initial focus on the growing markets for European wine consumption in China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Singapore.
Standing for ‘Traceability, Authenticity, Transparency, Trade, Origin, and Opinion’, the TATOO Wine Platform is built on Ernst & Young’s flagship blockchain technology industrialistion platform EY OpsChain solution, and in aiming to feature more than 5,000 quality labels from across the globe is said to be the world’s first e-commerce platform enabled by blockchain.
The project is supported by The House of Roosevelt, one of the largest wine cellars in Asia. “We are thrilled that Blockchain Wine and The House of Roosevelt have chosen EY teams to build the solution for their global commerce network,” said EY Global Blockchain Leader Paul Brody. “The future of doing business will be through tokens and smart contracts and this network is at the forefront of this transformation.”
With The House of Roosevelt to use the platform to sell wines directly from vineyards to hospitality clients and private consumers, as well as facilitate wine sales between collectors and investors, market stakeholders such as wine producers, distributors, logistics providers and insurance operators will be able to better trace the origin and quality of international wines.
According to EY, each bottle of wine in a batch will be ‘tattooed’ with a unique QR code which participants can then scan to access information such as vineyards’ names and locations, details such as the types of fertilizers used to grow the crops, and how each batch is transported for processing and delivery. It will also allow for the use of tokens to buy and sell wine, schedule and track shipments, and monitor warehousing and delivery.
“Blockchain has the potential to revolutionise the supply chain, which typically includes supplier payments, product traceability and contract bids and execution,” said EY Mediterranean Regional Managing Partner Donato Iacovone. “The token feature for the TATTOO Wine Platform addresses these elements, and even helps distributors to exchange tokens for services like expedited shipping or special warehousing for their orders.”
This is not the global professional services firm’s first foray into the world of blockchain and wine, with the Italian branch of EY having previously worked with local agri-business tech solutions start-up EZ Lab to develop the first case of blockchain-certified wine for the Cantina Volpone winery in the southern region of Puglia – known as the garden of Italy for its olive oil and wine production.
Tim Tse, Chairman of Blockchain Wine concluded; “As the market in China for European wine is expanding, there are many small and medium wine producers that want to reach this market, but there is no way for distributors – and their customers – to get information on product quality or authenticity. By integrating blockchain to our platform, we will establish direct connections between wine producers, the distributors, and the companies involved in logistics.”
Related: Ipsos Business Consulting supports Wine's Link Hong Kong IPO.
