Earlier this year, EMURGO – a global blockchain solutions company & a founding entity of Cardano blockchain – announced the launch of EMURGO Traceability Solution.
This tailored solution is designed to meet the needs of enterprises that want to reliably verify various aspects of their products in the marketplace. EMURGO Traceability Solution provides this added value of premium quality verification through the usage of blockchain technology to shed transparency on supply chain best practices including quality assurance, premium ingredient sourcing, and certification labeling data, among other processes.
By integrating this solution into their supply chain, enterprises enjoy enhanced consumer trust as a result of verified product quality.
To launch EMURGO Traceability Solution, EMURGO partnered with Blue Korintji Coffee – a local Indonesian coffee brand – to verify the quality of their higher grade Arabica coffee beans by integrating this solution with their coffee supply chain stakeholders.
Here is a Q&A with a Suryono – CEO of ALKO, a local coffee bean processing company in the coffee bean supply chain. ALKO is responsible for the buying of coffee cherry beans and processing these into green beans – and has given us a glimpse of how EMURGO Traceability Solution is being used on a daily basis to address a real use case for blockchain solutions.
EMURGO Traceability Solution Used In Everyday Life
Hello Suryono. Could you give a short introduction about yourself – what you do, and who you deal with in your line of work?
Suryono: My name is Suryono, Chairman of the Korintji Nature Coffee Farmers community & CEO of ALKO Sumatra Kopi Cooperative – a coffee association that processes coffee beans from the coffee-rich Kerinci region of Indonesia.
At ALKO, our target business market is B2B, namely coffee roasting companies around the world that procure our processed Arabica beans. Our cooperative has brought together 620 local farmers that currently farm approximately 415 hectares of Arabica coffee plantations at elevated altitudes (1,300 to 1,700 meters above sea level) around the mountainous region of Kerinci Seblat National Park.
One of the major issues we are trying to address through Korintji Nature Coffee Farmers & ALKO is forest preservation. Preserving the valuable land around the Kerinci mountains by reducing illegal logging and replanting our forests allows our farmers to grow high quality Arabica beans in a sustainable manner and helps to give them a better economic livelihood.
We are trying to introduce and raise awareness of our local Kopi Kerinci (Kerinci coffee beans) as sustainable, high quality, and eco-friendly to coffee consumers all around the world while also empowering our local farmers to gain knowledge of more advanced, green farming techniques.
Another problem that exists is the reliable traceability of our coffee beans from the Kerinci region. We want our high quality Arabica coffee processed by ALKO to be easily and reliably tracked and thereby gain valuable trust from our coffee consumers about the origin of their coffee. Our ALKO staff consists of five young farmers who are professionals in their fields.
How do you use EMURGO Traceability Solution in your job as a coffee processor?
Suryono: To address the issue of reliable traceability requires a technological solution. We are fortunate to have integrated EMURGO Traceability Solution into our coffee bean processing as part of the overall Blue Korintji Coffee supply chain. At ALKO, we utilize EMURGO Traceability in the coffee bean harvesting, post-harvesting, and shipping processes in order for us to guarantee the authenticity of the processed Arabica beans and verify each of the coffee bean processing stages to our customers.
How simple is it to use EMURGO Traceability Solution in your work? Some people have an abstract understanding of blockchain technology and might think it is difficult to use.
Suryono: Some roasting buyers still do not really understand what blockchain technology is and how it is used for traceability purposes. However, as populations become more developed, technology will continue to rapidly develop, and the needs of companies & consumers will demand greater quality assurance and attention to details.
Thus, there is an increasing need for a technological solution to guarantee the premium authenticity of products such as coffee beans in our case. The existence of blockchain technology now makes it possible to easily and reliably trace products such as our processed coffee beans and this is an important milestone as people do not need to know how the technology works, but can still enjoy its benefits through a simple application.
What are some problems you’ve had in the past as a coffee processor and how has EMURGO Traceability Solution fixed these?
Suryono: One of the main problems is that it’s hard to provide real-time information to consumers about what we farmers are doing during each part of the long coffee bean processing process. Since there are so many details in the processing stage, let alone before a coffee bean goes from the farm to the cup, there are many areas where information can be vague and/or inaccurate such as location, date & time of coffee bean harvesting, coffee bean processing, shipment, purchasing prices, and others.
All of these pieces of information carry enormous added value for farmers and other stakeholders in the supply chain to know that everything is running as it should be. At the same time, it is also a tremendous added value to consumers to receive a guarantee of quality on their coffee purchase.
EMURGO has helped to solve this main problem through their tailored EMURGO Traceability Solution which we integrated after numerous consultations.
What is the most important benefit that EMURGO Traceability Solution provides to you? How has your job as a coffee processor changed since using EMURGO Traceability Solution?
Suryono: The benefits are great for us. First, it’s easier to promote our premium & sustainably grown local coffee to the world by having its quality guaranteed and traced in real-time, which certainly increases the unique value and selling of our ALKO conservation coffee products.
Also, our current work pattern has changed as we now place an increased focus on harvesting details by classifying the quality and area of each batch of coffee cherry production. This is because each coffee bean has a different flavor profile depending on its region of harvest and altitude. With EMURGO Traceability Solution, the classification process has become a more disciplined and simpler way for us to maintain the quality of our premium Arabica coffee.
For more information on EMURGO Traceability Solution and how it can bring added value to your enterprise or if you are interested in purchasing sustainable premium coffee beans from ALKO, please contact us at systems@dev.emurgo.io and visit our website www.dev.emurgo.io
