Wholechain – a startup making waves with new approaches for achieving traceability and transparency across global land and sea food supply chains – is turning its attention to Ireland as it seeks to expand into Europe.
Wholechain is already trusted by leading international brands and has developed a platform that captures data at every step of the supply chain, ensuring information flows seamlessly between producers, processors, distributors and retailers.
One sector it has its eye on in Ireland is aquaculture, which is embracing the rapidly growing global appetite for seafood.
According to Mark Kaplan, co-founder and CEO of Wholechain, this rapid growth will bring with it increased scrutiny from regulators, retailers, and consumers demanding substance to back up claims of responsible sourcing and safe production.
This is where Wholechain comes in, using blockchain and data-driven tools to bring transparency, traceability, and efficiency to compliance with market and regulatory requirements.
Wholechain is verified capable with the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST)Global (on Seafood GDST) Dialogue Traceability standards, offering both open-source and permissioned blockchain solutions, flexibility solutions that helps small- and large-scale aquaculture producers meet strict market and regulatory requirements, such as the U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Rule 204 and the E.U. Deforestation Regulation.
Wholechain is one of eight up-and-coming companies taking part in the BIM Innovation Studio, delivered in partnership with Hatch Blue. The intensive six-day programme provides participating companies with expert mentoring, investor readiness training, and access to Ireland’s growing aquatech ecosystem.
“We see Ireland as a unique opportunity with enormous potential within the blue and green economies. Ireland has a genuine commitment to sustainability and is a global leader in this regard. What Ireland has done with food sustainability in relation to Origin Green is immense. There is great ambition now in the blue economy, and with the aquaculture sector growing rapidly here traceability is going to be so important going forward,” said Kaplan.
Aquaculture stands to gain immensely from this digital transformation. Farms and hatcheries increasingly rely on automated feeders, satellite monitoring, and digital farm management tools, technologies that generate valuable data on fish health, water quality, and feed use. Wholechain integrates these data streams into a single, unified system, allowing producers to provide visibility into operations from hatchery to supermarket shelf.
Wholechain’s standardisation enables interoperability that represents a breakthrough for the seafood sector with technology enabling farms, processors, and buyers to exchange traceability data across different systems without costly duplication, reducing expenses and encouraging industry-wide adoption.
For example, in collaboration Wholechain, the Global Seafood Alliance (GSA), recently launched Prism, a next-generation traceability and assurance platform that combines blockchain and GDST verified-capable traceability technology with user-friendly dashboards, giving seafood companies deeper insights into their supply chains.
Wholechain’s standardised data approach helps prevent recalls, reduce compliance burdens, improve operational efficiency, and help drive sales by building trust with customers and consumers. A Planet Tracker report featuring Wholechain estimated that investing just one percent of the global seafood industry’s revenue into improved traceability could boost profitability by as much as 60 percent.