THE BRAVE & THE BOLD
A COMPANY LAUNCHED IN DUNEDIN IS MAKING AN INTERNATIONAL NAME FOR ITSELF BY DIGGING DOWN TO THE ITTY-BITTY ISOTOPE LEVEL TO PROVE THE ORIGIN OF FOOD, FASHION AND PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS
A Dunedin company succeeds in finding a way to prove the origin of food, fashion and pharmaceutical products
“IF SHAVINGS FROM my beard were tested today, they would show I am in Switzerland,” said Grant Cochrane, CEO of the privately owned company, Oritain earlier this year. “It would determine my exact location as Zug.” (Zug is the beautiful and sleepy Swiss lakeside town with as many head offices as residents that is home to the Cochrane family today.)
“However, if we had tested shavings from my beard last week they would show I was in Sri Lanka, where I was working with a partner in a tea plantation.”
The science underpinning the rise of Oritain (since its launch by two University of Otago scientists, Professor Russell Frew and Dr Helen Darling in 2008) is so precise it meets the Daubert Standard, a rule of evidence admissibility for expert testimony in United States courts.
Russell, an advisor to the United Nations for applied chemistry in verifying origin, saw the commercial opportunity to use forensic science to prove the origin of products and, therefore, a way to help protect New Zealand’s reputation for producing premium food and fibre.
Oritain uses tools similar to those employed in criminal forensics alongside complex data-management systems to match chemical analyses against databases to ensure a product is what it purports to be.
“Some environments are nutrient-rich, some nutrient-poor, some are high in elements, some are low. We measure trace elements and isotopes in parts per million and parts per billion.
“We get thousands of data points and incredible granularity in what a product absorbs from Mother Nature as it is grown, reared or made,” says Grant. “Proprietary statistical models are then used to interpret data and create an Origin Fingerprint for a product. Once we have the genuine Origin Fingerprint, we can test other products against it to see if they match.”
This product-based system of verification is the gold standard compared with the swing-tag story of origin, or even the QR code system which can, pretty much, say anything and is susceptible to fraud.
“Our motto is that if you want to know where something comes from, you need to test the actual product itself, not read the label. The growth of ‘story’ is a welcome development. However, we urge brands and consumers to treat it with a dose of cynicism. Without independent verification of story, it can often be exactly that: a story. More mānuka honey is sold worldwide, for example, than is even produced.”
Grant says the big demand for verification is not coming from consumers nor from companies seeking to shut down counterfeit competitors but from investors seeking to put their money where it does no harm.
He quotes the January 2020 statement by the world’s largest fund manager, BlackRock’s Larry Fink (US$7 trillion under management in 2019), that his fund would avoid companies with high sustainability-related risk. Fink predicts that investors responding to the climate crisis will fundamentally reshape finance with a significant reallocation of capital away from harmful industries and companies.
“This pressure is coming from millennial investors, demanding that their money has only a positive impact on society, and looking for that triple bottom line of ESG [environment, society and governance],” says Grant. “Investors are calling the shots, even more so than the consumers.”
In such an environment, businesses must be able to prove their product claims. If, for example, a company wishes to establish their jeans are not made with cotton from statesanctioned slave labour in Uzbekistan, Oritain uses chemical profiles of the Uzbekistan cottonfield soils and/or that of the cotton fields listed as the source of the cotton. While data analysis also covers supply chains, it is the product itself that is the key in establishing Origin Fingerprint to a high degree of accuracy.
“Most brands now have ethical sourcing policies and work hard to ensure the utmost responsibility when it comes to procuring and producing, but without the added level of security that something like scientific traceability can provide, these efforts are often undermined. Some industries are notoriously difficult to validate such as coffee, soy, cocoa and palm due to the complexity of the supply chain and the high number of smallholder farmers.
“Yet these are also the industries that often contribute to the greatest social and environmental risks. We work with smallholder palm farmers in Indonesia to help protect those who are farming sustainably. Providing the baseline Origin Fingerprint then means testing can occur at any point in the supply chain, regardless of the level or degree of counterfeit.”
ELEVATOR PITCH “We use forensic science to test actual products, anywhere in the supply chain, and the results meet the Daubert Standard.”
HEADWINDS “The nature of supply chains means Oritain has to be global, so that’s a lot of resourcing in many countries. Sustainability and traceability are relatively new terms in business and it can be challenging for companies to find practical solutions. We’re acquiring an incredible amount of knowledge on supply chains, their risks and the nuances of sustainability and are now turning this information into actionable insights for our partners.”
TAILWINDS “New Zealand’s reputation as a beautiful place with decent people and its position as a leader in agri-business and agritech confers credibility and trust - that, and our close relationship with the University of Otago, which is fantastically important on the science side of things. There is also a growing demand for transparency and accountability from investors and consumers looking for independent verification to avoid products from a country, region, or even a farm benefiting from deforestation or illegal labour - be that child, forced, or slave labour.”
WHAT’S NEXT? “Once we achieve capability in new products, there is a great demand for it and our business model allows us to scale up and down easily.”
WILL THE HEAD OFFICE REMAIN IN DUNEDIN? “It will stay in New Zealand, where our science and operations are based, with satellite offices in other markets.”