Major French hypermarket chain Carrefour is joining forces with Swiss food giant Nestlé, and technology behemoth IBM to use blockchain to track yet another food item – Mousline instant mashed potatoes this time, which is especially popular in France.  

Carrefour has been on a roll in leveraging blockchain technology to track various items it carries – from chicken and tomatoes to eggs, oranges, and milk, reported The Crypto Sight.

In a press release (Apr 15) announcing the collaboration, Carrefour said “the project is being managed in a totally new way, because, for the first time in Europe, a distributor and a world-famous manufacturer have worked together on its implementation”. It also credited the expertise of each company in enabling the project to be implemented in less than six months.

Nestlé is a founding member of IBM’s blockchain-based Food Trust platform since 2017, while Carrefour said its partnership with the other two companies is a continuation of its Quality Lines range that uses blockchain to track food supply chains.

Bringing greater transparency to food consumers, customers can use their smartphones to scan QR codes to trace a potato’s exact origin, and its journey reaching Carrefour’s shelves. Specifically, shoppers are granted access to information including the “varieties of potato used, the dates and places of manufacture, information on quality control, and places and dates of storage before the product reaches the shelves”, as explained in the press release.

A Nestlé spokesperson told FoodIngredientsFirst, “Using blockchain, we aim to provide better visibility across the supply chain, benefiting the whole value chain including retailers and consumers. We have started with IBM blockchain technology and we have been experimenting with the technology for logistics and sustainability purposes…”

He went on to confirm Nestlé intention to continue exploring blockchain technology as it is considered “a new concept” for not only Nestlé, but also for consumers and the industry.

A few days prior, US supermarket chain Albertsons confirmed that it will use IBM’s Food Trust to begin tracking its iceberg lettuce, and possibly other products in future. On a global scale, CoinTelegraph noted that blockchain has been applied to the supply chain for about 5 million food items so far.