TRUSTED BYTES: Trusted, Decentralised, Digital Supply Chains for the Food Industry

COVID-19 and post-Brexit trading uncertainty have placed UK food supply chains under unprecedented pressure. COVID-19 demonstrated the absolute reliance of UK's society on the food system. 70% of the UK's imported food is from the EU, including highly perishable products such as fruit and vegetable which for seasonality reasons cannot be produced in the UK. Fresh produce supply-chains are the archetypes of "just-in-time" modality, even delays or disruption leads to food waste and massive financial losses. Volumes moved are vast, food accounts for 23% of UK road freight, but the industry is highly competitive, driven by buyer power from dominant retailer firms. The industry has continuously innovated, removing cost to offset competitive pressure. This served a social purpose to maintain low price inflation to consumers. However, COVID-19 and Brexit have created a new urgency to reformat supply-chains that are more adaptable, resilient and manage risk.

TRUSTEDBYTE step changes supply-chain management for the food sector. TRUSTEDBYTE's vision is to drive supply-chain productivity but creating a "whole industry" interoperable ecosystem for trusted data exchange, integrated with new AEO compliant API's to facilitate cross border transition alongside new telecommunications technology that provide ubiquitous accessubiquitous access to data.

To deliver this vision TRUSTEDBYTE has the following objectives

\[1\] To create the UK's first "data trust" for governance and sharing of data across the fresh produce sector at whole industry scale.

\[2\] To develop a novel AEO compliant API integrated to HMRC thatHMRC that facilitates cross border food trade.

\[3\] To develop a novel low cost 4G / Sat communications solution that provides ubiquitous access to supply chain data across the EU.

\[4\] To exploit these by widening the interoperability of theof the Bluering supply chain management software.

\[5\] To demonstrate these capabilities at scale across the UK fresh produce industry.

\[6\] To develop new business models to exploit new functionality.

TRUSTEBYTE's brings together leading technology developers (Bluering developers, Excelerate Ltd, Satellite Application Catapult, MTC) with key members of the UK fresh produce supply chain (Fesa UK, World Wide Fruit, Davis Worldwide, Histon Sweet Spreads), trade bodies (Fresh Produce Network), HEI's (University of Lincoln), standards bodies (BSi) and support from key regulators (HMRC / FSA) as well as input from Pinsent Masons, the UK's leading legal experts on data governance.

It provides a private sector approach to support multiple high-profile elements of government policy (facilitating post Brexit trade, food security, productivity, clean growth).