*** For immediate use on 10 SEP 2019

 

Hong Kong, 10 SEP 2019 - NEC Hong Kong and GS1 Hong Kong today announced that they have jointly developed the Wine Traceability Solution to enhance the cross-border supply chain visibility by utilizing NEC’s blockchain technology for business. With the appropriate permissions, relevant stakeholders of the system are able to query a secured distributed ledger and ultimately trace the origins and journey of a wine product.

 

The wine supply chain is one of the most complicated and disintegrated supply chains with distant grape-growers, suppliers, producers and demanding consumers. This complicated network poses challenges not only for efficient production and supply, but also, leads to opportunities for counterfeiting, adulteration, usage of hazardous and excessive chemicals. These factors entail a solution which can build trust among different stakeholders as well as in consumers by providing visibility into the supply chain at different stages and to  from farm to bottle.

 

To solve above challenges, NEC Hong Kong and GS1 Hong Kong jointly developed the Wine Traceability Solution using NEC’s Blockchain platform and GS1’s Global Supply Chain Standards interfacing with GS1 Hong Kong’s ezTrack platform.

 

The blockchain based traceability system can solve the challenges of counterfeiting and integrity by recording every transaction as a block in a chain. Inherently these blocks are immutable and any tampering with a block shall break the chain due to lack of further consensus.

 

NEC’s Blockchain is based on a novel architecture that caters to meeting industry standards. The architecture comprises of satellite chains that privately run different consensus protocols in parallel, boosting the scalability of the system, and allows a regulator to oversee the entire network and enforce specific policies via smart contracts. It uses a novel Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) protocol that is the fastest and most scalable BFT protocol to date. The protocol is powered by a novel message aggregation technique that does not require any public-key operations, thereby reducing computation / communication overheads. 

 

Moreover, NEC’s Blockchain combines hardware-based trusted execution environments with lightweight secret sharing. It also separates agreement from execution, so that only a subset of nodes is required to actively run the protocol. A simple failure detection mechanism is in place to efficiently deal with non-primary faults. NEC’s blockchain technology has a modular architecture allowing it to easily integrate with open source Hyperledger Fabric.

 

The solution integrates with GS1 Hong Kong’s ezTrack platform and based on GS1 Global supply chain standards. GS1 Hong Kong, building on the success of the HKSAR government-funded EPCnetwork Project, has developed ezTRACK™ - a service that addresses today's companies’ critical need for a highly reliable solution that can effectively track and trace the flow of goods and product information from point of manufacture to point of sale through a robust Electronic Product Code™ (EPC) standard-based platform.

 

As a cloud-based application compatible with various technologies including Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), bar code, Global Positioning System (GPS), sensors, ezTRACK™ runs various solutions that allow enterprises to instantly access business-critical product information related to work-in-progress status, product inventory data, delivery schedules, etc. 

The solution provides following benefits to the users:

• • Private and Confidential Satellite Chains

  
  Private and confidential network is instantiated only among the relevant stakeholders. Stakeholders that are not part of a given private ledger are unaware of its existence, the identity of stakeholders is stablished using PKI and provided with their own copy of ledger, ensuring the data privacy and confidentiality. Satellite Chains enable advanced scalability allowing a multitude of instantiated ledgers simultaneously. 

• • Enhance the visibility of Wine Supply Chain Traceability

  
  GS1, an organization maintaining Global Data Standards for supply chain business communications have developed an intuitive web application which supports the visibility of wine supply chain traceability and with NEC’s blockchain solution protects against counterfeiting and the unauthorized tampering of data. Ensuring provenance and authenticity for every bottle of wine. 

• • High security against attacks

  
  The solution achieved through Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) protocol leveraging secure hardware, like Intel SGX, which means it is resilient to network attacks and consensus-layer attacks. The technology of NEC Blockchain allows reaching consensus within fewer communication / verification rounds than existing BFT protocols. It requires fewer nodes to resist faulty nodes in the system. 

About NEC Hong Kong Limited

Established in 1984, NEC Hong Kong Limited has been rapidly expanding its activities to meet growing customer demands in Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China.

As a leading information and communications technology provider, NEC HK provides innovative solutions and infrastructure to promote safety, security and enhance the quality of life for individuals and the community. NEC HK’s expertise includes solutions for carrier networks, biometric identification, smart city, artificial intelligence, public safety, cloud computing, enterprise applications and infrastructure, unified communications, transportation solutions, multimedia displays and smart energy, as well as the provision of managed services and contact centre services.

In addition, NEC provides advanced display & visual products, server & storage, telecommunication and networking solutions. With a comprehensive range of technical experts and resources, NEC HK offers professional tailored solutions to meet the dynamic needs of customers in various industries. With our extensive products and services, we continuously deliver business value to customers globally. NEC HK is the one-stop answer for innovative technological excellence. For enquiry, please call (+852) 2733 5533 or visit http://hk.nec.com/.

NEC is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Other product or service marks mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. © NEC Corporation.

About GS1 Hong Kong Limited

Founded by the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce in 1989, GS1 Hong Kong is the local chapter of GS1^®, a not-for-profit, standards organisation that develops and drives adoption of global standards for business to uniquely identify, accurately capture and automatically share vital information about products, locations and assets. Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, GS1 has over 110 national chapters in 150 countries.

 

GS1 Hong Kong’s mission is to empower business to grow and to improve efficiency, safety, authenticity and sustainability across multiple sectors and facilitates commerce connectivity through the provision of a full spectrum of platforms, solutions and services based on our global standards. We provide a trusted foundation for accurate, sharable, searchable and linkable data. Our EPC standard lays the foundation for IoT, powering a range of IoT-based services and applications. We are helping industry to meet the challenges of omni-channel commerce and create a seamless customer experience. By engaging with communities of trading partners, industry organisations, government, and technology providers, we are fostering a collaborative ecosystem and aiming for “Smarter Business, Better Life”.

 

Currently, GS1 Hong Kong has around 8,000 corporate members covering close to 20 industries including retail consumer goods, food and food services, healthcare, apparel, logistics as well as information and technology.

 

For more information, please visit www.gs1hk.org.