Fonterra, Alibaba fight food fraud
Fonterra and New Zealand Post will trial new technology with the aim of stopping exported food fraud and increasing China’s trust in New Zealand products.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding announced yesterday that it would trial the use of blockchain to let online shoppers trace products before they arrived at their door.
Fonterra and NZ Post will be among the first to test the technology on Anchor milk products.
The three companies signed a memorandum of understanding to improve food safety last year.
Australia Post and health supplement company Blackmores will carry out the trial from Australia.
Consultancy firm PwC will review supply-chain reporting during the trial.
If the trial is successful, it will be rolled out for all sellers, producers and transporters on Alibaba’s Tmall Global online marketplace.
New Zealand food brands Whittaker’s, Sanitarium and The a2 Milk Company sell their products to Chinese consumers through Tmall Global. NZ Post has its own store on the website.
The blockchain idea stemmed from Alibaba’s food trust framework plan.
Tmall import and export general manager Alvin Liu said the technology aimed to ‘‘authenticate, verify, record and provide ongoing reporting of the transfer of ownership and provision of products and goods.
‘‘The framework aims to achieve end-to-end supply chain traceability and transparency to enhance consumer confidence and build a trusted environment for cross-border trade across Alibaba’s Tmall Global platform.’’
Blockchain is not Alibaba’s first use of technology to give shoppers more information about where their food comes from.
In Alibaba’s supermarket subsidiary Hema Fresh, shoppers can use the Tmall app to scan barcodes’ quick response (QR) codes on products. It shows information about a product’s manufacturer, country of origin, and date of arrival in China. Some products, like seafood, even showed import documentation.
Hema Fresh chief financial officer Sheng Cong said transparency was a priority for the company. More than half of the food and beverage products it sold were imported from outside China.
Alibaba or Hema staff visited all international suppliers to check they were legitimate, and carried out quality practices.
‘‘We just don’t rely on the suppliers’ word that they say ‘This is good; you should sell that.’ We will go to it by ourselves to see whether it’s worse.’’
Foodstuffs, which owns New World and Pak’n Save super- markets, did not audit its international or local suppliers.
If news broke of an exploitative or unsafe supplier, Foodstuffs barred the supplier immediately and required it to prove itself before it resumed doing business with it, Foodstuffs North Island chief executive Chris Quin said.
‘‘With our suppliers we basically make them responsible for it. They have to warrant to us that their product is coming to us free of slavery and safe. They have to show us proof.’’
The Ministry for Primary Industries verified the quality of New Zealand suppliers, he said.
‘‘We try to use the authorities here; we have less ability to do that offshore.’’
Quin said transparency was top of mind for shoppers buying food.
‘‘People are very conscious of what I’m eating, where it came from and how people were treated. The transparency of product now is so big.’’ The writer travelled to China courtesy of Alibaba Group.