Sustainability Magazine September 2019 | Page 71

CLICK TO WATCH : ‘ TRACKING DURIANS FROM FARM-TO-TABLE ON BLOCKCHAIN ’ 71
Exciting as blockchain is , we ’ re still at least a decade away from seeing the technology become widespread for tracking items across the supply chain . What ’ s more , it ’ s quite likely that blockchain will fail to live up to the hype . Even so , Gartner predicts that by 2025 a fifth of global providers will use blockchain for food safety and provenance .
In the short- to medium-term , we ’ re likely to see benefits coming from more traditional technologies . Take QR codes , for example . While in the
past these didn ’ t quite take off in consumer applications , they ’ re becoming more commonplace to the woman on the street . This is thanks to startups like ScanTrust who are bringing QR into the mainstream .
Moreover , they are increasingly used in manufacturing and supply chain operations to track products across their journey . These codes can hold a surprising amount of data including serial numbers , part numbers , lots , and dates . This enables manufacturers to perform inventory management , keep
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