Founder Gary Loh on CNA938 Money Mind – Tracking durians with blockchain technology
[Press Release]
PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub and DiMuto announce strategic partnership which will grow the global agri-food cold chain market
Partnership with PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub will equip DiMuto with the expertise to scale up its operations globally in a bigger way
Partnership will also see both parties build a trust framework, which aims to establish a set of principles to enhance safety and security of DiMuto’s Track & Trace blockchain solution in the food supply chain.
Singapore, 29 July 2019 – DiMuto, a trade technology service that provides end-to-end supply chain visibility for global businesses, will become a strategic partner of PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub. The strategic partnership will provide DiMuto with valuable expertise, including business and operations advisory support, to scale up its operations in the agri-food cold chain market globally.
PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub adopts a one-stop shop approach to providing solutions, services and collaborating with motivated entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, incubators and accelerators within the venture ecosystem to help them expand into their key markets.
“This is a significant milestone for DiMuto as it strengthens our capabilities in using disruptive innovation to grow the global agri-food cold chain market – in a bigger way. With PwC’s deep expertise in helping quality companies with their expansion plans, we are confident of accelerating our expansion worldwide, as we continue rolling out our Track & Trace blockchain solution to benefit more industry players. Now that we have stronger resources, we envisage a faster rate of market adoption for DiMuto’s trade solution, which is platform-agnostic and interoperable among the different blockchain systems currently used by the big global retailers,” said Mr Gary Loh, DiMuto’s Founder and Chairman <卢福全, 创办人与主席, 迪牟濤有限公司>.
DiMuto’s Track & Trace blockchain solution, which digitises each fruit into a traceable digital asset, tackles key issues that are hampering global trade in the agri-food cold chain market, including financing, supply chain transparency, as well as food safety and wastage. It also levels the playing field for small and medium-sized fruits businesses to compete with the big global brands. As it stands, Thailand’s Queen Frozen Fruits and Australia’s Morning Glory Enterprise are now using the solution to track and trace the movement of durians and spaghetti squash, respectively. During its three-month product trials between March 2019 and June 2019, DiMuto has tagged 1.2 million fruits (durians, apples, avocados, lemons and oranges) for various industry players in the US, Thailand, Mexico, Australia and China.
Patrick Yeo, PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub Leader <杨显聪, 创投中心主管合伙人, 普华永道新加坡> commented, “In today’s business environment, innovation is no longer just nice to have. Businesses across all industries need to constantly innovate in order to keep up with the pace of change. Strengthening traceability in the food supply chain through innovative technologies is in line with our purpose of building trust in society and solving important problems; and we are pleased to be working with DiMuto in this regard.”
For a start, both parties intend to develop a trust framework for DiMuto’s Track & Trace blockchain solution which aims to establish a set of principles to enhance safety and security in the food supply chain.
“DiMuto is in the business of creating trust, which we feel is sorely lacking in global trade. While many companies are already using blockchain technology to enhance traceability, more can be done to strengthen the trust factor and eliminate any lingering skepticism in relation to the usage of blockchain. This can be in the form of more well-defined industry standards to address potential governance gaps. We believe blockchain represents a new era of our economy and is here to stay. By developing a blockchain trust framework, we hope to raise standards and encourage greater adoption. Ultimately, we aim to create a healthy environment for disruptive innovation to positively impact our lives and the economy in a greater way,” added Mr Loh.
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About DiMuto
DiMuto is in the business of creating trust. We provide global supply chains with a trade technology platform built on 4Ts: Tracking, Tracing, Transparency and Trust – thus demystifying global trade and enabling collaborative commerce.
The DiMuto Track & Trace blockchain platform creates end-to-end trade visibility and forms building blocks for further value creation in trade financing, product marketing and data analytics. Since 2018, DiMuto has successfully tracked and traced over millions of pieces in produce and millions in dollars of trade value on our platform. We work with a global portfolio of clients in over seven countries and five continents.
DiMuto is founded by executive chairman Mr Gary Loh, who is also the Executive Chairman of First Alverstone Group. For more information, please visit www.dimuto.io.
About PwC
At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We’re a network of firms in 158 countries with over 250,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us what matters to you by visiting us at www.pwc.com/sg.
PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.
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For media queries, please contact: SEAH Kah Teik
Phone : +65 3163 7475
Email : dimuto@kreab.com
Natalie CHOO
Phone: +65 8722 7545
Email: Natalie.yl.choo@pwc.com
Find the press release here.
DiMuto launches Track & Trace blockchain platform with deal to digitise four million durians in the upcoming durian season for Thailand’s largest durian exporter
The Singapore-based startup is the first in the world to transform fresh durians into traceable digital assets
DiMuto’s Track & Trace solution provides a whole new level of visibility to Queen Frozen Fruit’s supply chain partners, minimising trade disputes while building trust and collaborative commerce within the durian trade
This increased transparency solves one of the biggest issues faced by the fresh fruits industry – access to traditional bank financing; opens up new trade finance avenues for businesses
Enables trade financing partner, Havenport Investments, to confidently quantify and mitigate financial risks associated with the fresh fruits industry, which are often deemed to be onerous
Singapore, 11 July 2019 – DiMuto, a trade technology service that provides end-to-end supply chain visibility for global businesses, has closed a deal with Thailand’s largest fresh durian exporter and frozen durian producer – Queen Frozen Fruit (Queen) – for the upcoming durian season. DiMuto will tag, track and trace around four million fresh durians from Thailand to China, Japan and other parts of Asia.
The Singapore-based startup is the first in the world to transform fresh durians into traceable digital assets. Under the deal, DiMuto is expected to turn four million durians into traceable digital assets from now to December 2019, enabling each durian to be uniquely tagged, photographed, tracked at each stage of the supply chain. DiMuto’s Track & Trace blockchain platform seamlessly integrates with supply chain workflows and existing systems to create traceability and accountability for each of the durians, from farms, factories, cold chain to distribution channels and end consumers.
Data is encrypted and loaded onto the distributed digital ledger, enabling Queen and its trade partners to obtain end-to-end, 24/7 visibility to the entire supply chain, from creating trade contracts, monitoring packing status, product receipt confirmation to customer feedback. This in turn allows Queen to share verified documents and data with its partners on a single platform, reducing trade disputes over quality and strengthening trust with its customers and trade partners.
The increased transparency solves one of the biggest issues faced by the fresh fruits industry: access to traditional bank financing.
“Securing funding from banks has always been a challenge in the fresh fruits industry as risk managers cannot see what is happening behind the scenes. Due to the disconnected visibility in the supply chain, the industry is paying a heavy cost for trade disputes, food safety breaches and wastage. DiMuto’s overarching goal is to address these challenges by creating trust, demystifying global trade and fuelling the growth of this industry. In the process, we aim to level the playing field for the underbanked SMEs in the industry by opening up new trade finance avenues for them,” said DiMuto’s Founder and Chairman, Mr Gary Loh.
With the full supply chain visibility provided by the Track & Trace blockchain solution, DiMuto’s trade finance partner, Havenport Investments (Havenport), can now conduct more accurate credit assessment and extend trade financing to more quality businesses.
Havenport has started providing trade financing to Queen, which has 14 fresh durian packing houses across the country, and four factories to produce Thai tropical fruits for domestic sales and exports to over 30 countries. In 2018, Queen was responsible for over 10 million durians exported to international markets and its total company revenue amounted to US$271 million.
“Our collaboration with Queen establishes us as a key player in the global fresh fruits industry, and our partnership with Havenport is testament to the assurance we can provide to empower fund managers to venture into industries previously considered to be too much of a risk,” added Mr Loh.
The partnership between Havenport and DiMuto could potentially extend beyond the fresh fruits industry, as Havenport plans to expand its trade financing portfolio by leveraging on the DiMuto’s technology where possible.
“With Havenport’s institutional-style process and risk management, our starting point for our investment solutions has always been to look at risks. DiMuto’s blockchain technology is an excellent solution for us to quantify and isolate the risks of related trades, and be in a stronger position to attribute liability. This will enable us to confidently provide trade financing to a wider range of quality and profitable businesses, especially those that have traditionally been unable to obtain bank financing. In particular, we focus on businesses that are uncorrelated to the volatility of the broader equity and bond markets,” said Mr Patrick Tan, Managing Partner, Havenport.
Established in 2018, DiMuto has captured global growth momentum with the support of key produce industry leaders in Asia and the Americas. It has also formed strategic partnerships to empower trade financing in the fresh fruits industry, and to build global industry benchmarks for trade blockchain solutions. Beyond durians, DiMuto is set to apply its technology to other produce categories, such as longans, mangosteens and avocados. During its three-month product trials between March 2019 and June 2019, DiMuto has tagged 1.2 million fruits (durians, apples, avocados, lemons and oranges) for various industry players in the US, Thailand, Mexico, Australia and China.
Above: Fresh durians in the packhouse ready to be tagged
Above: Unique QR codes assigned to each durian by DiMuto
Above: DiMuto’s Digital Asset Creation (DAC) service to digitise each durian into an immutable digital asset on the Track & Trace blockchain platform
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About DiMuto
DiMuto is in the business of creating trust. We provide global supply chains with a trade technology platform built on 4Ts: Tracking, Tracing, Transparency and Trust – thus demystifying global trade and enabling collaborative commerce.
The DiMuto Track & Trace blockchain platform creates end-to-end trade visibility and forms building blocks for further value creation in trade financing, product marketing and data analytics. Since 2018, DiMuto has successfully tracked and traced over millions of pieces in produce and millions in dollars of trade value on our platform. We work with a global portfolio of clients in over seven countries and five continents.
DiMuto is founded by executive chairman Mr Gary Loh, who is also the Executive Chairman of First Alverstone Group, and the Vice Chairman and Non-Executive Director of SunMoon Food Company Ltd.
About Havenport
Leveraging its strong heritage in institutional and retail asset management, Havenport is today an asset management and wealth services company integrating its asset management, wealth management and capital management expertise to create innovative investing, wealth and capital solutions for our clients and business partners.
Since its establishment in 2010, the firm has been serving the investing needs of sovereign wealth funds, global pension funds, banks, financial advisors and individual investors. Its mission is to create income and growth producing opportunities for passive investors, delivered in a secure and risk conscious manner. For more information, please visit www.havenport.com.
For media queries, please contact:
SEAH Kah Teik
Email : dimuto@kreab.com
HuiMin LEE
Email: huimin@dimuto.com
Havenport Investments partners DiMuto to finance the durian trade using blockchain technology
Havenport, an asset management and wealth services company, to provide trade financing to Thailand’s largest durian exporter
Adoption of DiMuto’s blockchain technology to track and trace every single durian from farm to fork enables Havenport to manage and mitigate risks; and confidently finance the durian business – a trade that banks typically find challenging to fund due to the “almost impossible” task of managing risks associated with the fresh fruits industry.
Achieves breakthrough in trade financing as the partnership with DiMuto empowers Havenport to finance a wider range of quality businesses, including non-conventional ones that traditionally would require more onerous risk management.
Singapore, 17 June 2019 – Havenport Investments (Havenport), managed by veteran fund managers Patrick Tan and Joseph Tern, has started providing trade financing to Thailand’s largest durian exporter – Queen Frozen Fruit, thanks to its partnership with blockchain technology company DiMuto.This is a breakthrough in trade financing as the onerous task of managing financing risks associated with the fresh fruits industry has largely prevented banks and financial institutions to extend credit lines to related businesses.
The partnership with DiMuto empowers Havenport to more holistically manage and mitigate risks related to the durian trade. DiMuto’s Track and Trace blockchain technology provides Havenport with end-to-end supply chain visibility of goods and money flow, as it digitises every single durian from farm to fork, enabling real-time monitoring of assets and clear documentation of every single trade transaction. Apart from mitigating invoice and goods tampering risks, the technology allows Havenport to determine and price the associated risks, effectively managing risks and opening new borrowing opportunities for small and medium size enterprises, and concurrently investment opportunities for Havenport’s investors.
“With immutable blockchain technology, we are better able to quantify and isolate the risks of this trade and be in a stronger position to attribute liability. This will enable us to confidently provide trade financing to a wider range of quality and profitable businesses, particularly those that have traditionally been unable to obtain bank financing. Providing such financing is particularly beneficial to Havenport’s clients who are primarily income focused corporate and individual accredited investors, as we seek to deliver steady and regular coupon payouts, in a trade that is largely insulated from and uncorrelated to the volatility of the broader equity and bond markets.” said Mr Patrick Tan, Managing Partner, Havenport.
Established in 2010, Havenport is an asset management and wealth services company that serves the investing needs of banks, wealth managers, financial advisors and individual investors. It structures and creates income-producing investment opportunities for passive investors, delivered in a secure and risk conscious manner. These solutions are particularly relevant in today’s aging bull market.
Havenport’s founders, Mr Tan and Mr Tern, are veterans in the asset management industry, having held leadership roles in Legg Mason, DBS Asset Management and Rothschild Asset Management.
“Our institutional legacy has shaped Havenport’s institutional-style process and risk management to the wide-ranging investment solutions, including new classes of alternative investments such as trade financing. This sets us apart from other trade financing players and lenders,” added Mr Tan.
Havenport has plans to expand its trade financing portfolio to cover more suppliers, industries and product types, by leveraging DiMuto’s blockchain technology wherever possible.
“Our partnership with Havenport shows the power of DiMuto technology, which can tag, track and trace every food or fruit item as they make their way through the entire supply chain. This not only guarantees data accuracy and reliability but also encourages quality assurance, empowering fund managers like Havenport to price the different associated risks, and provide the financing to global trades,” said DiMuto’s Founder and Chairman, Mr Gary Loh.
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About Havenport
Leveraging its strong heritage in institutional and retail asset management, Havenport is today an asset management and wealth services company integrating its asset management, wealth management and capital management expertise to create innovative investing, wealth and capital solutions for our clients and business partners.
Since its establishment in 2010, the firm has been serving the investing needs of sovereign wealth funds, global pension funds, banks, financial advisors and individual investors. Its mission is to create income and growth producing opportunities for passive investors, delivered in a secure and risk conscious manner.
About DiMuto
DiMuto is in the business of creating trust. We provide global supply chains with a trade technology platform built on 4Ts: Tracking, Tracing, Transparency and Trust – thus demystifying global trade and enabling collaborative commerce.
The DiMuto Track&Trace blockchain platform creates end-to-end trade visibility and forms building blocks for further value creation in trade financing, product marketing and data analytics. Since 2018, DiMuto has successfully tracked and traced over millions of pieces in produce and millions in dollars of trade value on our platform. We work with a global portfolio of clients in over seven countries and five continents.
DiMuto is founded by executive chairman Mr Gary Loh, who is also the Executive Chairman of First Alverstone Group, and the Vice Chairman and Non-Executive Director of SunMoon Food Company Ltd.
For media queries, please contact:
SEAH Kah Teik
Phone : +65 3163 7475
Email : havenport@kreab.com
HuiMin LEE
Email: huimin@dimuto.io
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As featured on the news:
The Business Times – Deploying blockchain in durian trade is bearing fruit
CityWireAsia – Singapore-based wealth manager inks blockchain deal
DiMuto recently digitized and blockchained the world’s first durian for one of our customers in Thailand, Queen Frozen Fruit. Queen Frozen Fruit is Thailand’s largest fresh durian exporter and frozen durian producer.
The Growing Appetite for Thai Durians in China
The Chinese market has seen a rapid increase in demand for durians in the last few years, with the total value of durian imports being worth as much as US1.1 Billion in 2017. This huge spike in demand could likely be attributed to the growing numbers of Chinese consumers travelling to Southeast Asia region, where durians are seen as a delicacy.
Queen Frozen Fruit has been ramping up operations to meet this growth, having added a brand new factory to their portfolio in October last year.
Fresh Durian at one of Queen Frozen Fruit’s 14 packhouses
Thus, with both increased demand and expanding operations, it is even more crucial for Queen to have the ability to efficiently and consistently track the 10 million durian products passing through their domestic operations to international networks every year.
Digitizing Durians with DiMuto DAC For The Queen of Durians
Following a comprehensive consultation, DiMuto successfully assisted Queen in digitalizing their fresh durians, turning individual fresh durians into a unique Digital Asset with minimal workflow disruption through the DiMuto Digital Asset Creation (DAC) system.
Our DACky systems are designed to be immediately deployable and easily installed at packing lines without hindering the factory’s daily operations. DiMuto DACky systems come in three forms – the handheld version for factories that need greater mobility, the Lite version for factories that do manual packing, and the Automated version for automated packing lines.
After the consultation, we deemed it was most appropriate to utilize a mixture of the handheld version and the lite version for Queen. Our DiMuto team went down to the packhouses in Thailand to train the staff and ensure a smooth deployment of our DACky systems.
Our DiMuto team working with the ground team at Queen
With DiMuto DAC, each durian is tagged to their respective carton, and a photo of the durian is then captured at the point of packing. Every individual durian has a unique identity, making them trackable and traceable through our DiMuto Trade Track & Trace Platform as they move through the supply chain.
DiMuto DACky Lite being deployed at Queen’s frozen durian factory
With the Trade Platform, Queen is able to see product information such as product photo and health certifications, sales order, transportation documentation that are associated with every single durian and batch. This makes traceability much easier for Queen to have the overall picture of each durian trade, compared to having records on different systems that do not talk to each other.
Bringing More Than Trade Visibility
Besides end-to-end visibility of the each durian trade, Queen is also able to share blockchain-verified data with relevant parties of the trade on a single platform. This means Queen’s trade partners are able to see important information such as the product photo of each durian showing their quality at the point of packing, as well as health certificates and certificates of origins that have been blockchained on our platform.
This helps Queen to reduce trade disputes over quality and strengthen trust with its customers and trade partners.
Not only so, because of this digitisation and subsequent trade supply chain visibility, Queen has also been able to access trade financing opportunities provided by DiMuto and our trade financing partner, Havenport Investments. Previously unbanked and unable to get financing from traditional financial institutes, our trade solutions have offered our customers groundbreaking financing solutions.
The DiMuto team is also working closely with Queen to get the most out of our 360 trade solutions platform, such as Marketing services and Data Analytics services as well.
Project Garuda – 4T Trade Dispute Resolution with DiMuto
Project Garuda is evidence of DiMuto’s record time dispute resolution process through our 4T Model. A packhouse on DiMuto’s system was able to track and trace its fuji apple as it moved through the global supply chain, subsequently being able to show blockchained proof of the quality of its fuji apple at the point of packing.
4T Trade Dispute Resolution with DiMuto
DiMuto Track & Trace solutions are centred on the 4Ts – our trade solutions platform must have Trackability, Traceability, Transparency therefore building Trust and enabling Collaborative Commerce.
TRACKABILITY: Digital Asset Creation (DAC) and IoT tracking condition of product at each supply chain stage
TRACEABILITY: Retrieving immutable records of condition of products at specific points of supply chain
TRANSPARENCY: Sharing of product information, condition and documents on blockchain with relevant partners
TRUST: Enabling Collaborative Commerce
A Verified Picture Speaks A Thousand Words
A local distributor in Indonesia claimed that a fruit importer had sold them apples with spots using these photos.
The conventional way of raising quality issues can be through WhatsApp, WeChat and emails. These disconnected communications methods made tracing back relevant documentation difficult, and it was also impossible to ascertain the authenticity of such product photos from customers.
However, a simple scan of the DiMuto QR code of each carton allowed the fruit importer to efficiently resolve this dispute over quality of products sold. By scanning the QR codes, the fruit importer was able to quickly pull out product information to help find out the truth. DiMuto has thus revolutionized the trade dispute resolution process by reducing the burden of proof on sellers through our blockchain platform.
The blockchained photo of the packed apples taken at the point of packinghouse and verified associated trade documents revealed that the fruit importer was not liable.
Instead, it showed that it was because of the local distributor’s lack of cold storage facilities that led to the apples developing spots.
Thus, DiMuto is able to effectively reduce the burden of proof on produce packhouses and importers to prove that the quality of goods at the point of selling fits the purchase requirements. This is only because of Digital Asset Creation (DAC) where we are able to digitize individual fruits and tag them to cartons and create and collect data regarding the product as we track it along the supply chain.
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