Unilever taps SAP’s blockchain solution to digitally track palm oil across supply chain

Unilever said it has entered into an agreement with SAP SE, where it will be leveraging the software platform’s blockchain solution to track, verify and report in real-time the origins and journey that palm oil takes to complete through its supply chain.

SAP SE claims that the solution ‘GreenToken’ is essentially a ‘Chain-of-Custody’ that offers companies a new level of transparency in their complex raw material supply chain.

“With GreenToken, we want to bring the same traceability and supply chain transparency to bulk raw materials that you get from scanning a bar or QR code on any consumer product,” said Nitin Jain, co-founder and general manager of the GreenToken by SAP. “Our solution allows companies to tell what percentage of palm oil products they purchased from a sustainable origin and track it to the end consumer product.” 

Unilever claimed it had applied GreenToken to source more than 188,000 tonnes of the oil palm fruit. During that exercise, suppliers were able to create tokens (in a digital form) capturing critical information on the palm oil’s origin and its entire supply chain.

“Unilever is committed to achieving a deforestation-free supply chain by 2023, and blockchain technology has the potential to help companies, like ours, track their supply chains to ensure the commodities we source respect people and the planet,” said Dave Ingram, chief procurement officer, Unilever. “We are encouraged by the promising results of our pilot with GreenToken by SAP, the latest building block in our tech-enabled approach to ensure a more traceable and transparent supply chain.”