Addressing Sustainability Challenges of the South African Wine Industry Through Blockchain-Related Traceability

The wine industry represents an important economic sector for South Africa, increasingly facing challenges through fraudsters, misdeclaring products by specifying false geographical regions or ingredients. Ensuring robust traceability therefore plays a major role in all three sustainability pillars. Current measures, such as certificates, neither guarantee transparency nor protect against counterfeiting. Therefore, the concept of supply chain traceability has emerged. In the South African wine industry this aims at ensuring the transparent and complete tracking of wine, including all ingredients and modifications. In order to additionally encounter false digital information, blockchain technologies are a major opportunity, as they offer the possibility of transmitting tamper-proof information, using a decentralized database shared by many participants. So far, the discussion of the potentials that this technology offers to wine traceability lacks the connection to the context of sustainable development. Therefore, this paper provides an overview of the opportunities applicable by different blockchain methods to enhance and guarantee traceability within the supply chain, simultaneously addressing sustainability challenges. Furthermore, an example of a possible business model opportunity is presented. By implementing this approach, consumers can not only be prevented from buying counterfeit products but also be enabled to make decisions based on economic, environmental, and social factors.