Showcase Program Roaring Success

Showcase Series Wrap Up

The Beefledger 2019 China Showcase Series Program came to a close  last week in Guangzhou. 

In 2019, we ran three Showcase programs: January; May and November. The overall Series was a huge success with over 500 participants enjoying Australian beef and wine, as well as seeing first hand developments in new technologies that support more dependable product credence claims.

The November Program was co-sponsored with our in-country partner, LibertyPost – a rapidly a social e-commerce platform (see below, Beijing). The November Program saw over 200 representatives of industry, government and the community at large participate in the dinners.

Purpose

The purpose of the Showcase Series was to:

1. 1. Demonstrate developments in our technology that enhances credentialing of product authenticity, with a focus on the supply and distribution of Australian beef into the China market;
   2. Introduce new audiences to Australian beef, wine and associated products; and
   3. Provide an opportunity for our research and development team from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) to implement a survey of participants and consumers to gauge attitudes towards provenance value credentialed on blockchain technologies and contribute to our understanding of digital narrative value creation. This was followed up by deep-diving qualitative research on emerging digital narrative practices in China.

November Program

The November Program included 2 event streams, run over 8 days in 6 cities. 

The event streams were:

1. 1. The Signature Series headed by Australian One-Hat Steak Maestro, Chris Wade; and
   2. The Chef Exchange Series in collaboration with Chef Outta Water, and their Executive Chef Chris Holen from Oregon, USA.

The Cities covered were:

1. 1. Shanghai;
   2. Shenzhen;
   3. Beijing;
   4. Guangzhou;
   5. Changshu; and
   6. Foshan.

Featured Beef

At the heart of our technology project is a recognition that we are there to support and serve those in the supply chain – from consumers right back through the supply chain to producers. Consumers are willing to pay good money for high quality products, and increasingly demand assurances that the products are authentic. This is the least that can be expected. 

Similarly, producers are increasingly seeking a more direct engagement with the consuming audience – to gain feedback and create new brand-driven, provenance value-based experiences to the consumer; and in the process create new “fan bases”.

The featured beef included:

• • 100 Day Grain Fed Black Angus from South Australia’s Limestone Coast. From Blue Lake Station we featured Cube Roll, Oyster Blade and Tenderloin. These were amongst the first shipment made of Australian BeefLedger blockchain-credentialed beef exports to China.
  • M7 Pure Bred Wagyu from South Australia’s Limestone Coast. From Mayura Station (and provided by TenderPlus in Shanghai), we featured the Platinum Tenderloin. 
  • Queensland 100% natural grass-fed rump. The grass-fed rump comes from cattle grazed naturally in SW Queensland. The dinners featured pre-portioned rump steaks credentialed by BeefLedger.

Our meals were prepared expertly and with flair by our Steak Maestro, Chris Wade. Chris also showcased some of his Steak Maestro range of flavours in the preparation of the meals. Flavours included dry rubs, flavoured caviars and freeze dried fruits. We are pleased to introduce Chris and his range to the China market via our platform at LibertyPost.

Shanghai

The November Program kicked off with a Signature Series 4-course dinner in Shanghai. Over 40 guests joined us to celebrate the first dinner of our last Showcase Program for the year. Distributors, supply chain operators, retail promoters, wine distributors and technology partners were all in attendance. 

We thank our venue hosts at TRIBE for their generous assistance and support.

Shanghai also saw us host a MasterClass in partnership with local wine merchants, LaoWines. The MasterClass event provided guests with an opportunity to interact with our Steak Maestro, Chris Wade, as he prepared another 4-course meal for all to enjoy. Guests also sampled wines from our MasterClass Wine Sponsor, Hayes Family Wines.

We thank our venue hosts at EGG for their generous assistance and support, and look forward to future collaborative opportunities.

Shenzhen

Our next stop was Shenzhen, where we co-hosted a Signature Tasting Event with HKD. HKD is one of Shenzhen’s largest importer of foods and beverages, if not the largest. In attendance were members of the Shenzhen Food Importers Industry Association including executive chefs of local five star hotels, distributors, cold chain logistics operators and finance sector leaders. 

Guests at the Shenzhen tasting were treated to 5 courses, one of which was prepared by HKD’s own Michelin Chef Ku. BeefLedger is now moving forward with HKD in forging a strategic alliance to facilitate enhanced efficiency in cross-border trading and associated financing, to streamline both the movement of physical goods and funds.

We thank HKD’s founder and chairman, Mr Li Gang, for his tremendous support and encouragement and look forward to working with him going forward to provide high quality Australian products – headlined by our amazing beef – to consumers in the South China market.

 

Beijing

The Gala Tasting Dinner was the largest of the events, with 70 guests in attendance. With this number of guests, the pressure was truly on our chef … particularly as we only arrived at the venue (Artyzen Hotel) at 2:30pm with dinner to commence at 6:30pm. With the support of Artyzen’s Executive Chef and his team, the guests were wowed with an amazing exhibition of culinary imagination and skill.

The Beijing Gala Tasting Dinner also saw the launch of a new collaborative joint venture to support the growth in two way trade and commercial interaction between Australian & New Zealand enterprises with the China market place. 

Together with LibertyPost, we have established LibertyPost&Co., based in Australia, to deliver an integrated platform and trusted channel for direct B2B and B2C market access.

LibertyPost&Co., integrates the following three core pillars:

1. 1. An in-country social e-commerce platform, with a rapidly growing community of discerning consumers (tens of thousands of active daily users, with a membership base growing on average at 10,000 new users a month);
   2. Blockchain technology-based product and supply chain provenance credentialing; and
   3. Product supply chain channels from the supply chain, and critical infrastructure on the distribution side (warehousing; cold stores; distribution).

BeefLedger products are one of the first Australian products to feature on this credentialed products platform, together with a range of wines and skin care products. The underlying blockchain credentialing technology will be expanded to enable other products to benefit from the same credentialing protocols and gain access to this integrated marketing, distribution and sales platform.

More details will be available on a separate post update.

Guangzhou

Our Showcase Series wrapped up in Guangzhou. The event was co-organised by MBH Consulting under the collaborative framework of The China Collective. The dinner was held in Ziran Hexie Art Gallery in one of Guangzhou’s most famous parks – Yuexiu Park. We thank the Gallery’s owner Ms Lily Li for her support in this event.

In an intimate and unique setting, guests enjoyed a rare treat – two global chefs performing in an open pop-up kitchen right in front of their eyes. The event format resulted in a highly interactive experience for guests, who not only came “up close and personal” with the chefs as each of 4 courses was prepared and plated, but also spent a lot of quality time mingling with each other.

It was a full-house, and the feedback has been incredible. Many who couldn’t make the event have already asked when the next one will be held. 

Importantly, the event also provided an opportunity for new buyers to explore the products, understand the technologies and discuss models of business collaboration. We look forward to progressing these various discussions to a positive mutually beneficial conclusion in the new year.

Changshu & Foshan

The focus for the Chef Outta Water Associates (COWA) events was to feature beef and wine which was provided by BeefLedger and that COWA had dealt with previously. There was also the need to promote the blockchain technology being used by BeefLedger.

Plus, there was the opportunity for COWA to continue to foster and grow its partnerships in the China culinary market and with culinary colleges to assist with creating increased contacts. The program allowed for both Chef Chris Wade and Chef Chris Holen to partner for any event in Guangzhou.

This partnership had arisen through a series of previous events including the visit by the Chansghu Culinary Association to Victoria and South Australia earlier in 2019 to meet with wine makers and beef producers.

 

A further opportunity occurred during the program to showcase the SteakMaestro Product List by Chef Chris Wade with the Changshu Culinary Association.

 

Technology Showcase

While Australian beef took centerstage, the Showcase events were also opportunities for BeefLedger to show attendees the latest in its technology development and update participants on recent progress, current technology status and future directions.

With our Proof of Authority (POA) blockchain ecosystem completed, we are now moving to commercial deployment. Chinese customers (wholesale and consumer) are increasingly demanding better credentialing and see blockchain as one of the key elements of a technology suite to deliver greater consumer confidence in product credence.

There always remains much more to do on the functionality side of things. However, the POA’s underlying elements for (a) object unique identity creation and tracking and (b) multi-signature + Schelling Point validation protocols for state changes, are now complete. Ongoing integration with data sources (eg., IOT devices, data clouds and Oracles) will continue so as to create greater depth in product and process attribute data, on a user-prioritised basis.

We also introduced a novel feature in our blockchain data ecosystem design and implementation, which places human responsibility and reputation at the heart of the action. Rather than simply devolve responsibility to devices, our state change validation procedures require the provision of Evidence Files that are meaningful to human beings – including but not limited to photographic and video files. 

Our POA ecosystem is open to all participants in the supply chain – including consumers. Evidence Files are the means by which consumers can meaningfully participate in validation procedures as activities are undertaken along the supply chain. Our design mitigates against risks of collusion on the upstream side, and is underpinned by the idea of Mutual Knowledge formation where reputations have accumulated and tangible value.

We also showcased the results of our recent collaboration with Australian digital fingerprint innovator Laava. The BeefLedger Smart Fingerprint is powered by Laava, and provides the window through which consumers can access a range of product value-adding information and validated data. We have integrated the Laava scan functionality with data validation of key Evidence Files against the unique file hash values credentialed in the blockchain.

Put plainly, users are able to have confidence that the embedded files accessible via the scanning function are themselves authentic, created and validated via the validation protocols of our POA blockchain ecosystem. (This capability goes towards addressing another dimension of misrepresentation of products – namely, the wanton use of images and other files that have actually been copied from other sources and re-used to make misleading representations.)

Research and Development

We are committed to continual improvement, and pushing the boundaries. 

Consumer and user feedback is central to this. That’s why the showcase events are also an important opportunity to gauge feedback on the focal areas of our work, as we continue to develop meaningful and valuable implementations of blockchain based technologies to support supply chain value growth.

Our research partners at Queensland University of Technology designed and implemented a digital survey of participants via WeChat. The survey sought feedback on user attitudes towards the value of blockchain technology-based authentication as well as feedback on how digital narratives can be designed to delivered to add new layers of value to consumers. We look forward to the results of the survey, so that we can continue to fine-tune our work and focal areas.

The survey was complemented by in-depth workshops between BeefLegends researcher, Jock McQueenie, with the team from LibertyPost. 

The survey and workshops is part of our Export Smart Contracts project being designed and undertaken in collaboration with QUT and Food Agility.

Program Sponsors

We would like to acknowledge the generous support of our sponsors. They are:

• • Gold Sponsor: District Council of Grant. DC Grant is the regional local government around Mt Gambier, in South Australia’s Limestone Coast region. DC Grant owns and operates the Mt Gambier Sale Yards. Some of the beef and wine showcased come from this region.
  • Event Partner: LibertyPost, Beijing.
  • Principal Wine Sponsor: Tamburlaine Organic Wines from NSW. Tamburlaine Organic Wines were actively represented at the Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing events. We thank them and their team in China for their generous contributions and hope the awareness raising of their great range of wines will contribute to continued success.
  • Regional Wine Pair Sponsor: Di Giorgio Family Wines, Coonawarra. 
  • MasterClass Wine Sponsor: Hayes Family Wines, Barossa Valley.