In this podcast we speak to Ellen Moorehead and Scott Grant about ubloquity’s Innovative Leap with Digital Catapult and McColgan's Quality Foods.

ubloquity, a frontrunner in distributed ledger technology solutions based in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, is helping transform data management in the food industry.

Our flagship paVe platform is not just a tool; it's an innovative approach to upholding the integrity of critical data in supply chains in an increasingly complex world.

The Digital Catapult project aimed to revolutionise the way critical data is captured, verified, and stored on ubloquity’s paVe platform. Our goal was to establish a secure chain of custody, demonstrating compliance with set auditing standards.

Armed with a £100,000 Digital Catapult grant, our six-month journey focused on capturing critical data from its source, ensuring its security on a distributed ledger, and granting access to key stakeholders. These included the data originator (a food testing lab), the compliance coordinator (the factory’s food safety technical team), and the retail customer or their independent auditor.

The Challenge: 
Traditional compliance and auditing methods in food manufacturing are often manual, time-consuming, with processes that are at risk of human-error. Ellen Moorhead from our project team explains, "Our objective was to address the cumbersome and potentially error-prone process of data management in the food industry."

The ubloquity Solution:
Our tech team, led by Scott Grant, developed a solution based on a distributed ledger system. “We introduced a system to digitise and secure the entire data journey, from the laboratory to the final audit,” explains Scott. “This approach streamlines the process and guarantees data integrity and transparency.”

Key Features of Our Solution:
- Efficiency: Automated data ingestion reduced manual entry time, leading to operational efficiency.
- Transparency: The introduction of an immutable audit trail fostered unprecedented trust among stakeholders.
- Cost-Effectiveness: The project aimed to demonstrate up to 30% cost savings due to the streamlined processes.

Ellen elaborates on the project's impact, "We transformed static, manual processes into dynamic, digital ones, reducing human intervention and enhancing data reliability." Scott adds, “Our system provided real-time, immutable data access to various stakeholders, revolutionising compliance in the food industry.”

Real-World Application and Future Scope

Our project's success was evident in practical applications. Ellen says, “Consider the lab result process – previously managed through emails and manual spreadsheet entries, now automated and securely stored on our platform. This saves time and resources and minimises potential human errors.”

Looking to the future, Scott sees vast potential: “What we’ve achieved with McColgan’s is just the beginning. The possibilities for enhancing compliance and audit efficiency are immense and span various industries and sectors, not just food.”

Conclusion: Pioneering a New Era in Data Management

Our Digital Catapult project with McColgan’s is a testament to ubloquity’s commitment to driving innovation for practical applications. “We’re not just innovating; we’re pioneering a new era of trust and efficiency in data management,” says Ellen.

Would you like to be interviewed for the podcast?

The ubloquity podcast is designed to help demystify how blockchain technology is being operationalised in the real world.

If you'd like to be featured or have an idea for an episode don't hesitate to get in touch with Dom.

Alan Lowry is the CEO at ESF - a serial entrepreneur and award winning director, he is also an expert in overseas trade and export sales. 

He is an export champion for the Department of Business and Trade, and Chair of Federation of Small Businesses in Northern Ireland.

Having worked and travelled all over the world, he is now based in Northern Ireland - a hot bed for innovation.

Alan never rests on his laurels, and is always interested in how to push things forward. In the street furniture sector he was one of the first to actively target the big theme parks like SeaWorld. A few years ago one of the biggest issues with the Parks was the fact that kids didn't want to stay all day because their cell phones or their mobile phones died. So he started chatting to them about how he could come up with a solar powered device that would allow people to charge their phone in the park without them having to introduce any energy, which meant that was also movable, and it would then keep the customers in the park longer and therefore increase their food and beverage and their merchandise sales. 

They've ended up exporting the idea to 30 countries around the world since then, and are on to generation three with USB phone charging, LED lighting, and SIM card enabled Wi Fi from the bench so that they can extend the Wi Fi signal.

And I haven't even mentioned his collaboration with The Wombles! Yes, that's right. Listen to find out more. 

Would you like to be interviewed for the podcast?

The ubloquity podcast is designed to help demystify how blockchain technology is being operationalised in the real world.

If you'd like to be featured or have an idea for an episode don't hesitate to get in touch with Dom.

Alex is an internationally experienced CTO/CPTO leading diverse global technology teams for major companies. He has led seven technology transformations, achieving top quartile performance and accelerating profitable growth. 

Starting in software development, Alex rose to head of Retail Banking technology at a leading UK internet startup bank. He later co-founded an eCommerce consultancy and led iconic CTO interim roles for 8 years. 

He transformed Sainsbury’s online platform as eCommerce IT Director, and later led the digital transformation at Barclays Retail Bank in London as Multichannel IT Director.

In 2012, Alex joined Walmart Global eCommerce technology in California as the multichannel technology director. He led the world’s 2nd largest grocery home shopping platform, the UK's fastest-growing fashion platform, and pioneered groundbreaking ‘click-and-collect’ initiatives. It was here that our paths first crossed. 

Since then he's also had senior roles at YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP in Italy and Emirates Group - where he was global CIO and global CTO respectively,  overseeing the strategy and transformation of a 2,500-strong team to modernise the technology landscape, enabling business growth and innovation.

Alex is now on a mission to unlock the potential of product & tech teams by harnessing the power of data and AI. 

"We’re infusing data and AI to assess and improve teams’ productivity index, enabling efficient and predictable delivery outcomes, helping our clients achieve their digital transformation goals faster. "

Alex feels in some ways, over the last decade or so, he's been trying to solve the same challenges, but in different roles with different companies. And now he wants to have the opportunity to figure out how to solve this for every company, in every industry, so that they can measure the productivity of the tech teams, but can also improve it. 

The second part of this is that he wants to really leverage the same platform, and his experience to create a new kind of tech community, bionic teams where productivity levels are off the charts. And he thinks technologies such as generative AI and blockchain are key to solving this.

Alex lends his expertise to startups, guiding them in product development best practices and the innovation applications of cutting-edge generative AI. 

Alex holds a Statistics degree from University College London and an MBA.

Would you like to be interviewed for the podcast?

The ubloquity podcast is designed to help demystify how blockchain technology is being operationalised in the real world.

If you'd like to be featured or have an idea for an episode don't hesitate to get in touch with Dom.

Ellen Moorehead is ubloquity's award winning agri tech manager. A farmer herself she knows first hand how bureaucratic processes and paperwork add complexity and cost when seeking to move animals across borders. 

In her role at ubloquity and as the coordinator of a new consortium - TETA - she is helping lead the way by testing innovative processes, and introducing blockchain-enabled smart technology. 

One such scheme being piloted is at the Rhug Estate in Wales - where alongside The Institute of Export & International Trade (IOE&IT) - Ellen is creating a remote witness app. The technology seeks to reduce the burden on farmers, processors and abattoirs, and enable vets - who are a scarce resource - to remotely and digitally audit and sign off compliance.

Would you like to be interviewed for the podcast?

The ubloquity podcast is designed to help demystify how blockchain technology is being operationalised in the real world.

If you'd like to be featured or have an idea for an episode don't hesitate to get in touch with Dom.

Najaf Gillani has over 20 years of experience running Global Software Engineering teams working for eCommerce giants like eBay, Walmart, & technology disruptors like Openwave systems. 

He is now OpSec Security’s Chief Software Development Officer.  OpSec Security, is a global leader in physical and digital anti-counterfeiting and brand protection solutions. 

Along with Najaf's strong professional experience, he has an entrepreneurial background and solid business acumen, which has enabled him to start and run a few businesses successfully. 

He has also started several innovation labs during his career to incubate new ideas and built many proofs of concepts to disrupt different markets.

In this podcast we discuss the future of AI, and how best to blend tech by harnessing human curiosity and experience with the best innovative solutions and IoT available to stay one step ahead of fraudsters and counterfeiters.  

Would you like to be interviewed for the podcast?

The ubloquity podcast is designed to help demystify how blockchain technology is being operationalised in the real world.

If you'd like to be featured or have an idea for an episode don't hesitate to get in touch with Dom.

In this podcast we discuss the challenge of needing more regulation to ensure our food is safe to eat, while recognising there are less resources for regulators to carry out 'in-person' checks. 

We explore the potential for new and emerging technologies like blockchain and IoT devices, to help tackle the problem, while making the entire system better, simpler and cheaper. 

Dom is joined by two legends from the food regulation and food safety industry - both of whom are officially 'retired', but aren't letting that get in the way of continuing to thought-lead and contribute on the global stage be that advising major companies or the UN and WHO. 

John Barnes is a former Senior Civil Servant with extensive experience developing and delivering food safety controls, including relevant legislation and guidance at a national and international level. He retired from the Food Standards Agency in 2015, and now works part-time providing strategic advice at company Board level on national and international food controls.

David Edwards is a food safety and business consultant. He was the joint founder of CMI which was sold in 2007 to NSF International. Currently David is an investor and advisor to food sector businesses and service companies drawing on 40 years experience and knowledge of the global food safety and health and safety standards and regulatory services market.

Both agree the current regulatory system is not fit for purpose. John says the system needs to be modernised as the resources for regulators aren't there. He outlines three strategic tramlines to enable change: 

1. using data and technology better
2. collaborating more - the private and the public control systems working  together and sharing more data
3. more transparency between the regulator and the industry

David believe transparency is an under utilised tool by regulators and thinks back to Campylobacter when league tables were reduced to drive positive change by retailers in their food supply chains.

John believes change is necessary but there are obvious weak points. When it comes to meat, veterinary inspections and certificates are the 13 amp fuse in the whole system. 

David adds, you can have a really efficient system of digitising all the paperwork that goes with food transport across borders. But the chicane in the system is a really clunky, old fashioned inspection system, where you have to have a veterinary inspector present to sign off masses of paperwork. 

He believes there's a real imperative for regulators  to deal with that chicane, streamline it, but he says it can be done, and it is being done.

Listen to the full podcast or read the transcript to see what else they had to say. 

Would you like to be interviewed for the podcast?

The ubloquity podcast is designed to help demystify how blockchain technology is being operationalised in the real world.

If you'd like to be featured or have an idea for an episode don't hesitate to get in touch with Dom.

Oran O'Flynn is the CEO and founder of Soul Search, having graduated from University College Cork with a degree in chemical engineering. 

But even while he was still at school he was innovating, and was lucky to be one of 50 students from across the globe to spend two weeks at NASA in Houston, Texas planning a mission to Mars. 

Soul Search is a start-up that aims to revolutionise the way businesses and individuals verify and maintain their relationships. Utilising blockchain technology, Oran and his team have created Digi-Proofs, a digital proof of relationship between two parties. 

These Digi-Proofs serve as a secure, tamper-proof record of partnerships, collaborations, investments, and more. 

With its Soul Bound Search Engine, users can easily find and verify relationships between companies using our unique Soul ID. 

In this podcast we discuss where we are in the Web3 revolution and what opportunities exist for companies like Soul Search to provide assurance and verification of relationships before people transact with one another.

I also get Oran's prediction on when we will send people to Mars and beyond.

Would you like to be interviewed for the podcast?

The ubloquity podcast is designed to help demystify how blockchain technology is being operationalised in the real world.

If you'd like to be featured or have an idea for an episode don't hesitate to get in touch with Dom.

Ine is an inspirational leader. One of the co-founders of ubloquity, she is highly skilled at managing complex, global IT projects. Last Thursday she was recognised as a leading innovator at a gala event in Belfast at the Women in Business Awards. 

Under her COO leadership, Ine has been instrumental in the scoping and project delivery of ubloquity’s secure borders solution for Fujitsu, and the establishment of the provenance blockchain for one of the world's largest food manufacturers. 

She mentors and guides more junior staff in the team, including award-winning Ellen Marks, who puts her success in no small part down to the support that Ine has given during her time at ubloquity. 

We all think the world of her yet she is so humble in return. 

Under Ine's leadership ubloquity is operationalising blockchain technology across global supply chains, optimising the accuracy and traceability of critical data to enable goods and services to flow more seamlessly. 

Using multifactor verification, Ine and her team are able to create a single source of the truth, establish new levels of trust between producers, manufacturers, hauliers, retailers, government agencies and regulators. 

With Ine's deep supply chain expertise and experience, she blends best-in-class technology with cutting edge science to prove, authenticate, validate and ensure supply chain integrity, removing unnecessary friction, speeding up processes, and increasing the security of assets throughout their lifecycle. 

Ine came up with the idea to design, build and test a new end-to-end digital chain of custody, utilising distributed ledger technology (DLT) to seamlessly connect the dots in a major food manufacturer’s supply chain. A world first. Her aim was to give the in-house compliance team an accurate, high-definition view of its chilli spice supply chain in real-time, via an online portal, utilising user-friendly dashboards. 

Ine and her team mapped the entire supply chain from the drying yard - where batches of chillies are given a QR code - all the way through to final bottling. Although the organisation had the ability to establish traceability, relevant data was held in three separate and distinct systems. Retrieving it was time-consuming and inefficient. 

In cases where a safety risk was identified further upstream, it was difficult to locate and isolate a specific impacted batch of chillies. Each entity in the chain could only see the data relevant to them, but it was not shared horizontally or from end-to- end. Also, the data wasn’t immutable. Records could potentially be overwritten, altered, or even tampered with. 

Ine created the ability to tie the data together and access it at the touch of a button in milliseconds. The hidden and hard to reach data is now visible to every participant in the connected supply chain. As new information is written to the blockchain, everyone is updated at once - and displayed on an operational and user-firendly dashboard. 

The ubloquity platform that Ine has created unlocks three key benefits:
 • more efficiency in the supply chain – eradicating manual input by switching to scan and auto input, which is more accurate and efficient;
 • proof of provenance and authenticity – providing the opportunity to charge a premium price for products and protect brand reputation;
 • risk reduction – the immediate ability to recall a batch from supply, with the potential to save millions of dollars for each incident or issue. 

Previously, had a regulator sought information on a specific batch of chillies - for instance the

Would you like to be interviewed for the podcast?

The ubloquity podcast is designed to help demystify how blockchain technology is being operationalised in the real world.

If you'd like to be featured or have an idea for an episode don't hesitate to get in touch with Dom.