The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has announced that its Second Workshop on Energy and Information Technology will be held on Sep. 21 via videoconference. This year’s event sees blockchain technology join the range of energy and tech-related topics to be discussed. However, it is unlikely that the invited oil industry bigwigs will be discussing the energy consumption characteristics of cryptocurrency. The organization is more interested in streamlining aspects such as the supply chain, as OPEC secretary general Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo explained: “The energy industry, particularly the oil sector, has always been eager to utilize and develop the latest …

Starbucks, the biggest coffee shop chain in the world, now allows its customers to trace the origins of its coffee using Microsoft's blockchain solution. Customers will be able to scan codes on the bags of coffee they purchase to discover their origins. Little information has been provided concerning the traceability solution other than the fact that it employs blockchain. Microsoft is one of the leading providers of blockchain-as-a-service platforms, though IBM's Food Trust platform is better known in the space. As consumers become more concerned about the ethical sourcing of the products they purchase, the blockchain-tracing trend could rapidly begin …

Author Don Tapscott’s latest book Supply Chain Revolution highlights opportunities for transformation that blockchain can bring to what the book calls a $50 trillion supply chain industry issue. Tapscott, who is also co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, told Cointelegraph that Supply Chain Revolution is the second book in the series being produced by the BRI, noting that over 100 companies agreed to make their research publicly available to interested readers. While the first book in the series introduced blockchain technology as a whole, the second and third books go into specific industry use cases. Blockchain can minimize pandemic disruptions …

TradeLens — the blockchain shipping platform created by IBM and Danish logistics giant Maersk — has signed on a major Turkish-owned international terminals operator. TradeLens is a global supply chain management platform designed for containerized freight and logistics, which was first launched by IBM and Maersk back in April 2018. It works by providing standards-based open APIs that allow supply chain data to be immutably and securely tracked and shared using a permissioned blockchain. Turkish-owned YILPORT Holding — which operates 22 terminals and 6 inland terminals across 11 countries — reportedly began integrating data from its Gebze and Gemport terminals …

The VeChain Foundation has partnered with accounting and consulting firm Grant Thornton Cyprus. According to an announcement from the company, the partnership hopes to extend blockchain solutions to a variety of industries. These will largely be determined by the Cypriot company’s network of customers but may include the food industry, pharmaceuticals, logistics, the automotive industry, supply chain management, renewable energy, e-commerce and more. Discussing the company’s interest in Blockchain development, Grant Thornton Cyprus’ director of distributed technology, Alexis Nicolau, noted that legislation governing blockchain technology in Cyprus “is imminent.” Sunny Lu, co-founder and CEO aofVeChain, believes that the pandemic has …

Although recycling may seem like a relatively simple concept, the plastics recycling supply chain proves otherwise. From understanding which plastics get recycled to determining the quality of those plastics, these issues and more are resulting in lower recycling participation rates. Statistics show that by 2024, the global recycling market is expected to reach $377 billion. However, plastic waste management has become an issue severely impacting today’s environment. For example, the United Nations estimates that about 300 million tons of plastic waste is produced globally each year. Unfortunately, only 9% of that is recycled. U.N. findings further show that about 12% …

The metals and minerals resource trading subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsubishi Corporation RtM Japan Ltd, has launched a blockchain platform named ECO for precious metals trading. Developed by Mitsubishi in partnership with the American blockchain company Skuchain, the platform is built on top of Skuchain’s EC3 platform for blockchain-based supply chain management and finance. According to the official announcement, ECO will ease metal trades between counterparties by generating, managing and executing invoices and trade confirmations. For the start, Mitsubishi will only bring its “most valued customers” on the platform but it plans to soon expand and implement ECO to cover …

VeChain’s newly released tool offers a suite of whitelabel services that will allow the food sector to implement on-chain safety management services. These services include traceability templates which track things like origin traceability, cross-border traceability, full-process traceability, and more. They have high hopes that the tool will be useful for many sub-sectors and products, such as fresh food, dairy, alcohol and wine, and imported food. Companies will also gain access to third-party services such as PwC, Deloitte, DNV GL, among others, to help them to reduce the cost of certification, auditing, insurance, and supply chain financial services. Lifecycle food traceability …

COVID-19 is the most devastating plague to ravage humankind this century. Every day, the number of patients infected with the coronavirus is rising globally and taking the highest human toll in the United States. The highly infectious virus was first contracted in November 2019 in Wuhan, the capital city of China’s Hubei province, through horseshoe bat-to-human contact at the Huanan seafood market. Many of the initial COVID-19 patients were either stall owners, market employees or regular visitors of the market, who rapidly developed a severe respiratory illness. Despite the market being shut down on Jan. 1, 2020, the virus has …

Chinese tech giant Tencent has revealed its plan for creating a blockchain-based wine traceability platform in collaboration with Changyu, China’s biggest and oldest wine producer, according to local news on July 31. It is said to be a nationwide first for the country’s domestic wine industry. According to Changyu, the platform is designed to trace every step of the wine-making and sales processes, including planting, brewing, distribution and management. It will issue a unique traceable certificate for each bottle of wine it produces. The whole process will be recorded on the blockchain network. The firm’s bottles’ scannable QR codes would …

The first private Sri Lankan container terminal, South Asia Gateway Terminals, or SAGT, recently joined IBM and Maersk’s blockchain trade platform TradeLens. It is the first terminal in the country to adopt blockchain technology to digitize its trade processes. In an announcement on July 16, Maersk said the collaboration will help SAGT grow past sluggish manual paper-based documentation processes. Digitization for operational efficiency SAGT is an important link in conducting global trade and it annually processes more than two million twenty-foot containers. The integration of the TradeLens platform into its operations is expected to help digitize documentation and streamline the …

The United States Food and Drug Administration released a blueprint and pilot study for food safety, highlighting blockchain as a viable option for some of the identified challenges. The blueprint, released earlier this week, breaks down some of the challenges facing food distribution throughout the country and looks at how smart technologies could solve them: “Our world is evolving at a breakneck pace. With this evolution comes new technologies, ranging from new digital tools to new sources of food ingredients. [...] These advances provide new tools and approaches for tackling food safety issues, but also present new issues to consider …