In an indigenous move, a 17-ton Australian cross-border shipment of almonds found its way from Australia to Germany. The state-backed Commonwealth Bank of Australia partnered with five logistics companies to carry out the first-ever cross-border trade. They conducted the experiment to demonstrate that DLT, smart contracts, and IoT can perform as effectively as traditional shipment methods. They ran both the blockchain-based and existing shipment processes in parallel to assess the advantages of the new technology. By adopting the modernization, the global trade chain will become more agile, efficient and transparent as the paperwork and administration will significantly decline.
In the Australian cross-border shipment experiment, logistics companies monitored various aspects of the global supply chain across multiple trade levels. They streamlined the entire documentation process by making it easy to upload and view documents. By integrating blockchain technology with IoT, they digitized operations, documentation, and finance, reducing the time and effort required to manage these tasks.
The team tracked the shipment’s location and monitored detailed temperature and humidity conditions inside the container carrying almonds. They used IoT devices to maintain transparency of trade conditions. By tracking data points throughout the Australian cross-border shipment, they improved planning and operations.
CBA prefers the Ethereum blockchain for the project because it offers the required functionalities. CBA will be building up a private blockchain on top of Ethereum blockchain and will have limited access to authorization rights. The conducted experiment offered more data access to the parties involved, but in future, the platform will be more restricted.
The CBA is taking blockchain as an opportunity to thrive upon to change the trend of the global supply chain for a more controlled and efficient process that will remain secure also.
