Visibility, not traceability, is the key

Fisherman holds a large salmon on the deck of a boat. Photo courtesy of NOAA.
Fisherman holds a large salmon on the deck of a boat. Photo courtesy of NOAA.

MARCH 4, 2022 • Seattle, Washington, USA • Transparent Path, a Seattle-based technology startup on a mission to keep food and capital out of landfills, will debut its real-time supply chain visibility platform at Seafood Processing North America. The show is part of the industry-leading Seafood Expo, this coming March 13-15, 2022 in Boston.

Show organizers expect approximately 17,000 attendees and 850 exhibitors to arrive in person at the Boston Convention and Exposition Center. This will be Transparent Path’s first time exhibiting. The company’s CEO, Eric Weaver, noted that ten different companies offering traceability software would be present. 

“The need to demonstrate traceability in the seafood sector is a growing concern for producers, processors, brokers, distributors and retailers. Corporations are under pressure to guard against illegal fishing, overfishing, unethical sourcing, bad animal husbandry, and bycatch. Food safety, recall efficiencies, and new traceability regulations are also key concerns. These emerging traceability platforms gather and utilize traceback data, which is great. But it only covers part of the issue,” Weaver claimed. 

Real-time visibility enables real-time intervention

“Traceability programs provide a valuable service during a recall or when a problem has been identified at retail. But it’s all after the fact,” Weaver continued. “Everything went sideways in the past.”

Weaver relayed a story of an independent trucker hired to haul a $400,000 container of king crab to a retailer. After delivery, the trucker received a call to come back and pick up the load — it had spoiled. The driver was forced to haul the load to a local dump, and pay the disposal fee. He made a claim on his insurance. Shortly after, the insurance company conducted an investigation. They found that a cold storage warehouse had left the container on the dock at room temperature — for a week.

“Had the shippers used a real-time visibility service, this product would have never reached a landfill,” said Weaver. “The shipper would have gotten their full margin. That’s why real-time visibility is so much better. It provides data gathered by sensitive instruments, that’s hard to argue over. The primary metric right now on whether fresh fish is safe upon arrival is often, ‘is meltwater in the bottom of the container?’ Or ‘does it look or smell bad?’ That imprecision creates an unnecessary amount of financial and safety risk,” said Weaver. “Real-time visibility is the only certain way to know if cold chain compliance was maintained throughout the entire supply chain.” 

The Transparent Path team will discuss the differences between visibility and traceability at Booth 874 on the Expo floor. 

About Transparent Path

Transparent Path spc is a technology company focused on supply chain visibility for perishable products. The company’s mission is to reduce food waste and financial loss through the continuous monitoring of perishables. Its platform sends alerts, allowing the supply chain to intervene before products are lost to disruptions.   

Powered by IoT sensors, cloud collaboration, and artificial intelligence, Transparent Path’s secure, scalable platform provides manufacturers, processors, logistics partners and retailers of perishables with the ability to see and act upon supply chain issues in real-time. As a result, Transparent Path’s customers know immediately when something goes wrong. Supply chain partners can act to prevent risk. The company’s freshness algorithms can even predict freshness before arrival.

Headquartered in the US, Transparent Path was founded by Eric Weaver, a 30-year enterprise transformation specialist. Previously, Weaver launched the Xerox Customer Experience Practice, where he managed a $550M services book of business. 

Visit xparent.io to learn more.