The platform enables tracing of sustainably produced FiberMax® cotton from seed to sew
BASF Agricultural Solutions has initiated a ‘Seed 2 Sew’ pilot project to establish a blockchain platform as a response to one of the most complex supply chains – cotton production. Fashion brands can now be guaranteed greater transparency and traceability when sourcing sustainable cotton.
Classically, the traceability within the cotton value chain has been limited from ginning to end fabric. Farmers have often been left behind due to a mere lack of applications, infrastructure, and technology to record and certify their inputs. This leads to an information and trust gap in the textile industry.
To close this gap, BASF Agricultural Solutions has partnered with five farms in their existing Certified Sustainability FiberMax® cotton program and other local players along the cotton value chain in Greece – the largest cotton producing country in Europe – to guarantee a professional and transparent system of supplying sustainable cotton to the fashion industry. It follows the journey of a cotton garment starting from BASF seed all the way to retail. All the partners are within 250 km radius from Komotini to Thessaloniki, Greece, which additionally allows to reduce the carbon footprint of manufacturing cotton garments.
Bext360, a supply chain sustainability software service company, has partnered with BASF to digitalize the cotton supply chain onto a blockchain platform which uses Hyperledger to bring greater IT flexibility and lower energy use: 99.95 per cent compared to earlier blockchain networks. Traceability and transparency are now in the hands of the end customer by using fully digitized and secure crypto blockchain technology, where every step along the value chain must be approved on a digital record by everyone on the network. “We are proud to advance our longstanding commitment to sustainability and digital advancement, leveraging the power of blockchain technology,” said Gustavo Palerosi Carneiro, Senior Vice President Agricultural Solutions EMEA & CIS at BASF Agricultural Solutions. “Offering such digital tools to farmers and consumers is another important step towards reaching our sustainability commitments”.
After this first concept milestone, BASF will continue to work on the blockchain ensuring data points are covered during the current harvest and will explore the tokenization aspects available in every blockchain platform. These are a reward system for sustainable practices which could be used for offsetting and/or in setting carbon emissions in the value chain.
