New Zealand Bank ASB Facilitates Meat Export To South Korea Via Blockchain

The use case scenarios of blockchain have added another feather into its hat, the New Zealand private bank ASB has enabled a meat shipment to South Korea by using distributed ledger technology (DLT). The financial institution claims that while ASB used DLT “in parallel” with its traditional system, this deal marks the first-ever “bank-led blockchain trade” in New Zealand’s export history.

According to the press release on Friday, the ASB settled a transaction between Greenlea Premier Meats and a South Korean importer along with a local export insurer Vero and documentation processing distributor Prodoc. The head of global transaction banking at ASB, Greg Beehre, explains that instead of the transaction time needed with the traditional trading software of two to four days, the blockchain system speeded up the export process to an hour.  All trading documents were uploaded, shared, and updated by using blockchain solutions. Beehre commented in the press release:

“[Blockchain] offers traceability and is scalable across the whole supply chain ecosystem giving all partners in the process a competitive advantage.” 

The CFO of the Kiwi meat exporter,  Jack Vollebregt, the new system accelerated the export process significantly, along with the risk of fraud and cyber-attacks as it removed the weak links in the traditional trading system and guaranteed data integrity. The platform that was utilized was built by blockchain company VerifyUnion, which launched a supply chain management product in June. The CEO AJ Smith stated:

“New Zealand is an export-led economy. It was really important to us to be able to use emerging technologies to help ASB solve a real problem facing its exporting customers. At the documentation layer, the blockchain-enabled supply chain allows partners to access key documents, such as a bill of lading, certificates of origin and other documents required by customs, which streamline these processes.”

Owned by Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), ASB plans to use the DLT system for trade via airfreight in the coming weeks.

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