Increasing transparency and efficiency in global seafood supply chains
How can transparency in the seafood industry be improved through digital technologies, like blockchain, in order to address operational inefficiencies and build consumer trust?
DNV and Deloitte have interviewed key stakeholders along the value chain to highlight operational challenges in global aquaculture and fisheries and to explore how technology, in particular blockchain, may offer new ways to generate new value creation and turn the industry toward more sustainable supply chain management.
Key issues
The report highlights in particular issues where blockchain provides an opportunity:
- The demand and need to increase transparency to improve operating efficiency across the supply chain, equip the end consumers with trustworthy product information and to manage fish stocks and biological ecosystems more sustainably.
- Blockchain could provide a remedy, provided that the industry players are willing to engage in data sharing and interoperability amongst each other, from feed production and broodstock, or fishing vessel operators, and all the way down to the retailers.
- Incentivizing that stakeholders gather and share their data will be a crucial step towards more transparency while all ecosystem players, sector players and adjacent service providers alike, can contribute with incentive schemes for data sharing and, at the same time, benefit in a transaction heavy, global and disaggregated trading sector from gaining more data based insights into stakeholder operations.
Key challenges
Researchers did find some concrete challenges within the industries, providing hurdles but also opportunities for those able to engage and make the transformation:
- Trust within supply chain partners is a major hurdle to overcome and must be ‘exercised’ in a real-life project to harvest overall benefits
- The data already being collected are ‘trapped’ in silos today and to connect with other partners’ (in the supply chain) information needs significant effort of sharing in daily operations;
- Identify the priority topics, which generate a surplus situation for all. Our insights to date point towards the following topics to concretize such benefits:
- Traceability: Finding the means and defining the necessary information to present to end consumers in their hunt for a true high quality product
- Fish welfare and biology: use of analytics for better insights into biologics to boost productivity and quality
- Innovative finance and insurance products based on better data to make qualified decisions which render benefits for stakeholders
- Efficiency gains in the supply chain, e.g. through automated documentation and smart contracts.
