IOTA Shines in UK Trade Report: Exploring DLT and Digital Innovation in Supply Chains

• The Border Transformation and Digitization (BTD) program, also powered by IOTA’s DLT, enables real-time data exchange across supply chain stages.
• It helps UK border agencies manage operations more effectively with transparent tracking and monitoring capabilities.

The United Kingdom’s latest trade report, “Ensuring Economic Growth,” emphasizes digital innovation and distributed ledger technology (DLT) for enhancing efficiency in global supply chains. This report highlights the role of the Trade and Logistics Information Pipeline, powered by IOTA Foundation’s technology. The TLIP is praised for supporting secure data sharing and streamlined logistics effectively, reported CNF.

IOTA Foundation’s Major UK Achievement

The Cabinet Office has introduced the Border Transformation and Digitization (BTD) program to enable real-time data exchange from the supply chain to UK border agencies. This initiative, which also uses IOTA Foundation’s technology, builds on previous Ecosystem of Trust pilots. This way it aims to equip government agencies with a seamless system for monitoring consignments. Hence, it ensures the effective management of border operations.

The program incorporates a range of “signals” or datasets that cover essential details such as consignment type and movement route. Also, it even tracks key transport events, health testing results, and arrival/departure timestamps.

Furthermore, a notable aspect of the BTD program involves chilled poultry consignments shipped from the EU to the UK. Thus it offers a live case study on how DLT and advanced digital tools can improve supply chain operations. For these shipments, freight forwarder TETA coordinates logistics services through its digital platform to collect data from each point along the route. This data includes health inspections, import declarations, and transport details.

Central to this initiative is the Intelligent Digital Trade Corridor (iDTC), which leverages IOTA’s Trade Worldwide Information Network (TWIN) for secure data storage and sharing. TWIN, underpinned by IOTA Foundation’s DLT, serves as a platform for handling both supply chain documents and various signals transmitted by the Cabinet Office, per the CNF report. This system enables supply chain participants to access a full view of a consignment’s end-to-end journey for 100% transparency.

TETA utilizes sensor technology to monitor the consignment’s location and environmental conditions, such as temperature within containers, throughout the shipment journey. This data is then shared as signals with the Cabinet Office Data Hub, which relays it to other border agencies. The BTD program tests three main categories of signals: dispatch, health tests, and journey events.

How iDTC Enhances Border Security & Efficiency

The iDTC platform, which leverages IOTA’s technology, provides significant benefits for UK government agencies, border officials, and port operators. In the report, a user explained, “I am able to access Safety & Security Declarations (SSD) to identify consignments of interest. Using iDTC, I can search additional associated supply chain information to corroborate information on the SSD and deepen my risk evaluation.”

For port operators, the iDTC system integrates with port inventory systems, which allows users to review incoming consignment data through the system. A port operator noted, “I can use the Port Inventory System (CSP) to see which consignments are scheduled to arrive into my port.”

They added, “Using the CSP system, I can ‘click-through’ to the iDTC and access more comprehensive information about the consignments.” This integration indeed helps in reducing any delays and boosts the accuracy of intervention planning.