Italian beer company uses blockchain traceability

Birra Peroni, the Italian beer company part of Asahi Group, is using EY OpsChain Traceability to tokenise its beer goods using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum public blockchain.

An NFT is basically a unique non-interchangeable digital footprint of an asset, which can be stored on a digital ledger called a blockchain. The NFT thus provides a digital authentication of the identity of an asset and can be used for variety of assets including artworks, photos, as well as food products such as meat, seafood and now beer. 

Using the EY blockchain as-a-service offering on blockchain.ey.com, each batch of the Birra Peroni beer is minted with unique non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which enables greater visibility and efficiency across the company’s supply chain.

Federico Sannella, Corporate Affairs Director, Birra Peroni, said: “For Birra Peroni, the bond with the agricultural supply chain and the quality of our 100% made-in-Italy malt are fundamental strategic assets. We believe that sustainability is deeply related to the respect for the raw material, and we wanted to bring this value alive to our consumers, allowing them to follow the journey of the malt from the field to the bottle. With EY OpsChain Traceability, we have found the ideal platform to carry out this important project. This is a major step forward in our commitment to bring visibility and transparency to our supply chain for both consumers and supply chain partners.”

The traceability solution includes the ability to develop complex multi-stop supply chains, direct enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration through application programming interfaces and the ability to invite and collaborate with business partners. It is designed to address operational efficiencies and transparency.

Paul Brody, EY Global Blockchain Leader, said: “With EY OpsChain Traceability, we make it easy for enterprises to set up their operations and make the entire Ethereum blockchain an extension of their ERP environment. EY teams are committed not just to enabling business processes on the Ethereum blockchain, but to making the inputs and outputs properly tokenised and transactable. We envision a future where everything from inventory to purchase orders to invoices can be tokenised and integrated into a decentralised finance and business operations ecosystem.”

The Birra Peroni traceability project included the participation of the pOsti srl start-up, which helped improve the user experience through supply chain assessment, landing page and multimedia components creation.

Virgilio Maretto, CEO of pOsti srl, said: “A fully automated traceability process was implemented, starting with the acquisition of the information, its registration on the blockchain, and the processing and presentation on the landing page of significant data from the 100% Italian malt supply chain. With the help of innovative technologies, we created a highly customised landing page, offering an immersive and tailor-made customer experience. We expect that this Birra Peroni project becomes a best practice for companies that want to promote supply chain transparency through a process of traceability.”

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