Carrefour to use blockchain technology to track fresh food

The largest retailer in Europe, Carrefour, has announced it will use blockchain technology to track and trace produce.

The technology, developed by the US-based digital firm IBM, will monitor fresh food as it travels between farms and shops.

The supermarket chain aims to eventually deploy the blockchain-based technology across all of its fresh product lines, Reuters reported.

“The key thing for us as Carrefour is to be able to say when there is a crisis that we have the blockchain technology, so we are able to trace products and tell the story of the products,” Laurent Vallee, Secretary General at Carrefour, informed Reuters.

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IBM has been working with a range of global logistics firm, retailers, and suppliers to enhance supply chains.

IBM Food Trust has recently become commercially available, following 18 months of testing.

The technology allows for information to be tracked and shared across the industry, such as how produce is grown, processed, and travelled.

IBM blockchain offering reportedly can reduce the checking time for provenance from days or weeks to seconds.

IBM Food Trust is priced at $100 per month for small businesses with less than $50mn in revenue, $1,000 per months for medium businesses with up to $1bn in revenue, and $10,000 per month for business giants.