A consortium of senior executives and representatives from Australian government, industry, associations and agencies have announced Australia’s National Traceability Accord (NTA), a set of six agreed principles for encouraging a co-ordinated and harmonised approach toward sustainable end-to-end supply chain traceability and trade modernisation.
The NTA will represent open non-competitive collaboration on cross-sector supply chain traceability.
“The National Traceability Accord is a welcome industry initiative aligned with the DAWE-led National Traceability Framework,” said David Hazlehurst, Deputy Secretary at the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE).
“We look forward to exploring how it can complement existing Government policies and priorities to strengthen supply chains and build resilience,” Hazlehurst said.
The document aims to heighten trust and interoperability between non-traditional allies, with the flow-on effect of improved market access, product safety and strengthening of global competitiveness for Australian trade.
Ram Akella, Co-Chair of the National GS1 Traceability Advisory Group and Woolworths Group Head of Business Solutions for Product Traceability, was instrumental in the realisation of the Accord principles.
“With numerous businesses across industry sectors working to implement full product traceability, it is vital to establish a common set of principles to share and use data,” Akella said.
“The National Traceability Accord is a shared vision that creates a collaborative and transparent framework for the modernisation of trade and traceability,” he said.
As a critical next step, the NTA will act as a joint industry-government voice to promote enhanced ways of working and informed policymaking on traceability.
“The accord is about building industry wide capability for the greater good,” said Maria Palazzolo, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer at GS1 Australia.
“When all parties come together to share insights and learnings, they create whole-of-industry improvements that benefit all stakeholders,” Palazollo said.
A recent report by the World Economic Forum titled ‘Visibility and Traceability The Twin Engines of Sustainable Supply Chains’, demonstrates the need for companies to collaborate.
“Supply chain executives should look to engage and collaborate beyond their own four walls. By identifying organisations within their sector – as well as across sectors – that are wrestling with the same issues and actively trying to solve them, executives can begin to solve challenges that would have been impossible to take on alone. Companies that take the lead in collaboration today will have the advantage. Those that sit on the sidelines will have to be content with whatever the industry ultimately adopts. Those that seize the opportunity now, however, will set the standards, both within their industry and across sectors,” the report stated.
Palazzolo continued that a difficult topic is around transparency and data sharing.
She said that it is critical to ensure that organisations share information with the right levels of privacy and agreements in place.
“Agreements to be able to do something quickly when there is an incident, particularly those that impact safety and making sure that we do traceability with purpose,” she said.
Key players in traceability are cold chain and logistics providers.
“The key to achieving coordinated traceability is the implementation of all technologies as a system between competing stakeholders,” said Mark Mitchell, Chairman at Australian Food Cold Chain Council (AFCCC).
“We need to focus on this via initiatives by government and peak associations and start gluing the people and stakeholders together,” Mitchell said.
He also emphasised that this is the primary goal, not developing more technology.
The Accord is facilitated through the National GS1 Traceability Advisory Group.
Source: GS1 Australia