A new wine marketplace project launched by Blockchain Wine Pte. Ltd. received support from Ernst & Young, a multinational accounting firm considered to be one of the Big Four alongside Deloitte, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The firm has a blockchain platform that digitalises supply chains for businesses. Now, the UK-based company is reaching out to the Singaporean wine company for its recent venture.
Ernst & Young (EY) announced via PR Newswire that they are currently supporting Blockchain Wine Pte Ltd, a company based in Singapore, in operating its wine marketplace. The latter has recently launched the wine marketplace aptly named ‘TATTOO,’ which stands for ‘traceability, authenticity, transparency, trade, origin, and opinion.’
The said marketplace was developed to become accessible for consumers from the Asia Pacific region. It leverages EY’s ObsChain blockchain platform, which functioned as a place for consumers to purchase premium wine products. At present, the TATTOO Wine marketplace offers a wide selection of wines from countries such as Australia, France, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, and the United States. Their ultimate goal is to assist wineries of varying sizes from everywhere else in the world in offering their products to the Asia Pacific market by utilising the blockchain and e-commerce technologies.
The marketplace featured a secure, blockchain-based platform that will use digital tokens. These digital tokens identify the authenticity, provenance, and quality of both new and vintage wines. In the process, it will also reduce, even eliminate, the need for intermediaries while promoting cost efficiency.
Blockchain Wine Pte. Ltd.’s Founder and Chairman, Tim Tse, echoed the purpose of the marketplace and pointed out the traceability of the product from the point of origin to the consumer or buyer through direct delivery. He was quoted saying:
“TATTOO helps reduce layers of distribution and helps address the issues of counterfeit wines, optimizes supply chains, facilitates trade, and empowers both wineries and consumers.”
While the platform is based on EY’s OpsChain platform, the user-friendly experience was made possible by the SAP Commerce solution. This brings us back to the timely launch of SAP’s newest data centre in Singapore, which aims to support the deployment of platform-enabling businesses in the region. The wine marketplace allows a two-way process: for wineries to upload catalogs of their products and for consumers to browse and purchase from the given selections.
Meanwhile, the shipments are tracked and managed on the public Etherium Mainnet, a blockchain protocol that is developed and deployed to areas where transactions are broadcasted, verified, and then recorded. The EY Opschain features the integration of the commerce front-end and onboarding tools, which allow wineries to link their respective production systems to the Ethereum blockchain.
SAP Director for Blockchain Exploration, Thomas Uhde, shared that the project was one of the first commerce integrations of SAP software to a blockchain platform. He noted that there is “great potential in bringing scalable consumer-friendly front-end on a blockchain-based digital market.”
Waddesdon Wine Rothschild Collection’s CEO, Christopher Campbell, shared his excitement on the future of the marketplace:
“Waddesdon Wine markets wines from the Rothschild chateaux and other prestigious chateaux. We look forward to offering our wines within the TATTOO marketplace.”
EY’s Global Blockchain Leader, Paul Brody, shared his thoughts on the standing of the current era in terms of production data and the Ethereum Mainnet. He said:
“…thousands of companies will routinely be pushing production data onto the Ethereum Mainnet – creating, offering, and selling digital tokens that represent their products and services to consumers. This is what the mainstreaming of blockchain business looks like today.”
With the coming of this marketplace platform, the distribution and purchase of wines from all over the world are made more accessible and more convenient, especially for enthusiasts with no capacity to travel and make a purchase.
