Ag Tech Sunday - AXIchain is helping Australia to stay ahead of the curve

By David Picker - Principal Relationship Manager, AXIchain

AXIchain is helping the Australian livestock and red meat industries to move to a completely paperless digitised documentation supply chain. In a collaborative consultation process with stakeholders we have identified risks in the red meat supply chain that may jeopardise Australia’s excellent reputation as an export nation.

We can’t become complacent, we need to work to minimise human documentation error in our industry, from the livestock production process through to our export certification and now is the time to lift our standard and stay ahead of the curve. If not, more financial consequences could occur like China imposing an import ban on four Australian abattoirs recently reportedly due to labelling and paperwork errors. It can be argued that the beef industry may have been collateral damage in an unrelated incident, but the reasons given for the ban were correct.

Perception is critical and maintaining Australia’s integrity is of paramount importance in upholding our position with all our valued export trading partners with accurate reporting processes. Any further impacts that may flow over to other markets from the reasons given on the Chinese suspensions could result in serious financial impositions or loss of market access. Australia is currently negotiating a free trade agreement with the European Union, our second-largest trading partner and we’re aiming for full tariff liberalisation of agriculture, so we need to ensure our traceability and export documentation systems are robust enough for our most discerning customers in the EU. At the same time, consumers are demanding more information about the food safety, provenance, and sustainability processes of Australia’s production (DAWE).

AXIchain is building and delivering tools to address these risks in a collaborative approach with all supply chain stakeholders, from farm to fork. Tools like a digital, mobile-friendly National Vendor Declaration (mNVD) that integrates into the supply chain improving traceability, automated logistics management, blockchain smart contracts and digital bill of lading and a domestic and exports sales platform creating the end to end visibility of food products needed in the commodity trading environment of the future. There is a growing demand for consumer ready products and full track and trace systems such as Axichain’s will underpin the safety and viability of Australia’s reputation in a rapidly changing environment. If you would like to get involved, please get in touch!

https://axichain.io/