Our Mission
BeefLedger is driven by a belief that consumers and all supply chain participants can benefit from greater transparency and streamlined transactions in the beef supply chain. Food safety and fraud concerns are massive issues, especially in places like China. Australia is a premium producer of safe, high quality food products - including in beef - which is increasingly sought out by Chinese consumers. BeefLedger is developing and commercialising an integrated blockchain-enabled beef provenance platform and smart contracting payments regime that streamlines payments and strengthens consumer confidence in product credentialing.
Our Experience and Capacity
Our mission is driven out of the experiences of our team, which has extensive (decades’ long) involvement in beef production and distribution, land management, product packaging innovation, financial services and cross-border trade - particularly with China. The team straddles extensive industry experience and expertise, combined with a strong research and development core backed by our academic institutional partnerships and allied industry partners.
BeefLedger is a founding industry partner of the Food Agility Cooperative Research Centre (FA CRC - https://www.foodagility.com). The FA CRC is an Australian Commonwealth Government funded initiative. It operates a AU$150m research and innovation hub to harness the power of digital technologies to help the Australian agrifood industry to be more internationally competitive and sustainable.
BeefLedger Limited is a public unlisted company, registered in Australia. As a public (unlisted) company, we are required to meet strict audit and governance requirements. Our independent external auditor is WPIAS (https://www.wpias.com.au).
What is BeefLedger
BeefLedger is an integrated provenance, blockchain security and payments platform. It is a general purpose technology platform project, utilising blockchain technologies, that seeks to harness a diverse range of product provenance information as a basis of improved payments and confidence amongst supply chain participants.
It will provide a platform by which consumers can validate the credentials of the product they are purchasing, and drive efficiencies in the supply chain by reducing information asymmetries between transacting parties. BeefLedger combines the blockchain’s attribute of being a robust validator of historic states (as a record of past events) and the power of crypto-economics to drive incentivised systems shaping behavioural optimisation in supply chains.
Why the Beef Supply Chain?
The beef supply chain in Australia is one of the most complex food production and distribution systems around involving live animals, dynamic environments and climatic conditions, strict regulatory regimes, transportation and processes of disassembly and reassembly.
Numerous families, businesses and communities depend on the viability and sustainability of the beef supply chain.
There are over 45,000 beef cattle producers across the country, with a national herd of around 27 million head of cattle. The industry employs around 200,000 people. The industry exports around 70% of annual production and is the third largest exporter of beef in the world. The off farm value of the beef industry in 2016-17 was AU$16.85 billion. The value of exports in 2016-17 was AU$7.1 billion. As demand for beef in growing markets like China grows, the risks of meat fraud and safety increases. A robust credentialing platform is needed to ensure the reputation and value of the Australian beef industry is protected.
BeefLedger can monetise data value, and ensure this value is captured by those responsible for its production. This includes provenance data right through to consumer data. Whereas Australians consume on average 26kg per person of beef per year, Chinese consumption is at considerably lower levels (6kg). However, Chinese beef consumption is growing rapidly.
Learnings from a complex supply chain such as beef can then be readily translated to other similar supply chains, anywhere in the world.
Benefits
BeefLedger aims to deliver the following six core outcomes:
1. Confidence in beef provenance;
2. Increased brand value and supply chain profitability;
3. Streamlined payments and secure cash flow stability (with flow-on social benefits in rural areas through reduced stress, which serves to contribute to mitigating high suicide rates);
4. Mitigation of meat fraud risk and increased bio-security transparency. This involves working closely with our packaging innovation partners and developing robust crypto-economic systems to incentivise desired future behaviours;
5. Feedback to producers to drive continuous improvement; and
6. Transparency on impact credentials in areas such as ecological, social and economic impacts.
Who Benefits
In delivering these outcomes, the BeefLedger platform demonstrates the practical “win-win” outcomes for key industry stakeholders.
- Consumers get better, proven products and access to validated product provenance data.
- Producers are able to capture provenance value as a result of transparency in the supply chain and the power of smart contracts to ensure provenance investments are rewarded.
- Processors and other supply chain participants can access a fair an stable supply chain with rewards built in for the pursuit of excellence. Excellence is credentialed through data, which is monetised.
- Regulators are provided with a transparent compliance and audit system to ensure adherence to community and regulatory expectations and requirements in areas such as food safety and bio-security management.
- Data collectors and providers have an opportunity to access a transparent and accountable opportunity to valorise data services.
Indirectly, through enhanced transparency and the ability to monetise data-based validation of sustainable industry practices, there are a range of social, economic and ecological benefits that can be achieved.
BEEF Tokens: Participating in the Platform and Network
Anyone in the community can participate in the network by purchasing BEEF Tokens. BEEF Tokens are pre-mined utility tokens, which act as a means of payment for data value across the supply chain as well as for the supply of cattle and meat to consumers.
A foundational release of BEEF Tokens were distributed by private pre-sales. The pre-sale program concludes 30 June 2018, with 30% of Tokens committed. Tokens have been secured by Chinese consumers (retail end user as well as wholesale import partners), domestic supply chain participants and project partners. Some of these Tokens will enable the transacting of our first credentialed beef shipments (see below).
The company will retain 30% of Tokens as a “liquidity reserve” to support future liquidity needs of the ecosystem. The remaining 40% of tokens will be released progressively to the market place based on demand. Our token release framework is being developed as part of our collaborative research being undertaken under the auspice of the Food Agility CRC.
There is no public crowd sale or ICO to speak of. BeefLedger expects that Token holders will require the ability to publicly exchange BEEF Tokens, to ensure a vibrant liquidity pool is available to support the activities of the participating supply chains.
Money Where our Mouth Is
To demonstrate the technology, BeefLedger itself will utilise the platform to export its own limited premium Australian beef products to the China market. This first shipment is scheduled for end October 2018, and will be used to demonstrate the core capabilities of the platform as well as enable the development team to identify areas for ongoing research and development.
Roadmap
Our immediate roadmap comprises:
1. Minting of the BEEF Token and circulation to pre-sales supporters - June 2018.
2. Execution of FA CRC Co-Funding Project #1 - July 2018.
3. Establishment of a public exchange opportunity for the BEEF Token - August 2018.
4. Consumer App with Integration of Crypto Wallet / Payments with QR Code Scanning Functionality (Proof of Concept) - September 2018.
5. Proof of Concept integration of Consumer App with blockchain-recorded product journey data - abattoir to consumer market (map visualisation of ‘track and trace’ journey) - September 2018.[/li][/list]
6. Delivery of first shipment of credentialed premium Wagyu to China market (end October 2018).
7. Integration of farmgate-to-abattoir journey capture data to spatial blockchain (Proof of Concept field trials implemented) (December 2018).
8. Completion of first fully-integrated farmgate-to-restaurant data implementation (Proof of Concept) (December 2018 / January 2019).
Our website
We can be found at www.beefledger.io