Project launches highlighting advanced cold chain tech

The platform, which received a multi-million pound investment from Innovate UK, has been developed to connect primary production and supply chains to retail to provide traceability and provenance of ingredients while increasing manufacturing productivity, improving processes and reducing waste across the supply chain.

The project serves as a national demonstrator of a digital agri-food supply chain, using sandwich manufacturing as the use case, and represents a transformative step forward for consumer safety and trust.

Designed to be an open platform, the project has established a best-in-class digital supply chain that paves the way for a wider ecosystem network and offers a low barrier approach so that supply chain organisations of all sizes and technological maturity can participate. The project extends the use of advanced IoT, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to the ready-made food supply to ensure the traceability of every component ingredient in the supply chain – from primary production to retail. The new platform is both scalable to the entire food industry, and adaptable to other industries with similar resource and supply patterns.

The consortium of organisations behind the platform includes IMS Evolve, a UK IoT company; Raynor Foods, one of the UK’s leading sandwich suppliers; University of Lincoln, University of Exeter, Digital Catapult, Sweetbridge, Inc., Crosspay, NetFoundry, INDUSTRIA Technology and R3 as well as supporting partners Kinesis Telematics Limited NESIS and Anser Coding Inc. The consortium was backed by the UK government through its Innovate UK program.

“The ability to use advanced technologies to irrefutably track ingredients in food, from primary production to retail, is going to be integral to maintaining public trust in the food system, reducing waste, and bringing one of the world’s most sophisticated supply chains into the digital age,” explained Edward Porter, director of IoT Solutions at consortium leader, IMS Evolve. “We are delighted to have been involved in the Digital Sandwich project as the lead partners in a consortium that has the potential to completely digitally-transform almost any complex supply chain system. This technology is designed to be open to organisations of all sizes across the supply chain meaning that anyone can benefit from the increased connectivity, productivity, food quality and safety and reduction in waste that the platform promises to deliver.”

For more information, visit www.ims-evolve.com