Yesterday, VeChain, along with a few Chinese partners, announced the Yunnan Pu’er Tea Traceability Platform powered by ToolChain.
Pu’er Tea is a type of fermented herbal tea produced in the Yunnan province of China. The fermentation process used is a traditional Chinese speciality, which makes this tea unique. Some branded Pu’er Tea can fetch as much $3,500 per kilogram.
The announcement was made at a conference attended by local government officials, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences Tea Department and Yunnan Tea Traceability Association, among others.
Lu Xiutian, from the Yunnan Provincial Department of Commerce, shared the details of the traceability system at the conference.
Initially, the platform will be used for Pu’er Tea and is expected to incorporate other products such as Chinese herbal medicines, Yangcheng-Lake crab and Wuchang rice.
“We should attach great significance to this tea traceability platform, sparing no efforts to ensure every tea brick has a traceable origin, verified proper distribution and logistics, and authentic qualification, which can certainly raise the reputation of Yunnan tea globally,” said Xiutian in his speech at the conference.
VeChain said each product in the Pu’er tea traceability system would be tagged using QR codes or NFC chips. The platform will record the lifecycle of the tea brick, from raw material sourcing, processing, warehousing, distribution, and in-store sales to the end-users. The data will be uploaded onto the VeChainThor Blockchain by IoT devices at every stage. Customers can view the provenance and production data by scanning the QR code or NFC chip using their smartphones.
VeChain has partnered with Chinese tea maker Mengku Rongshi, traceability company Linova and blockchain solutions provider Yunlian for this initiative.
VeChainThor is a public blockchain focused on enterprise use cases. Some of its projects in China include a food traceability solution for Walmart China, blockchain insurance solution for PICC, and liquified natural gas (LNG) management solution for ENN Energy and state-owned Shanghai Gas.
Automaker BMW and certification company DNV (also an investor) are some other high profile clients of VeChain.
