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What does Ambrosus do for companies in the food sector?
What we have is an IT platform that ensures origin, safety and quality of food and it leverages blockchain technology to do this. Consumers can then trust the data recorded by millions of data sensors to tell them their food is reliable.
We have also built distribution software that allows small business owners or farmers to sell product direct to market. The key solution that this offers to farmers is the ability to do direct sales and make more money from their product, especially if it’s a quality product.
Is there resistance to this type of technology?
A lot of the practices we are encouraging are things many companies don’t want to do because it shows full transparency of their supply chains.
Our initial approach has been to work with the companies who are interested to adopt this system, including several major Swiss food companies, which they see as a new marketing tool for their consumers. Ideally, they wouldn’t want the technology to exist.
What are the cost benefits to companies using this technology?
One major company we worked with that has global distribution had amazing software for tracing its goods around the world.
But I was surprised to find out all the data inputs were manual. This is not good for scaling or for automatic quality control as somebody still has to check the validity of the data.
Our technology offers real-time auditing through sensors, which record the data on to the blockchain in real time. So you can identify problems immediately and you stop orders to prevent further distribution of a problematic good or product.
Is there a need for this technology with Bord Bia’s QA schemes?
It is one of our goals to make the system fully compliant with governmental standards. This is something we’re already doing with the Swiss quality assurance agency by making its services more efficient and allowing it to reduce quality control costs.
Across Europe, quality assurance schemes are a very manual and costly process as inspectors have to physically go to farms or food processors. There is so much money spent and wasted on a system that is still very manual and still not 100% fool proof.
Can this technology be used in exports?
One of the companies we work with is exporting Swiss chocolate and cheese to China. And while the Chinese consumer will pay premiums for Swiss goods because they mean quality, problems arise on the distribution side in China.
The storage conditions might not be proper or the product might be counterfeited, especially if it’s high-quality product like what comes from Switzerland.
A company or country can protect its reputation from these issues as our technology can independently verify the quality standards after the product has been physically exported.
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