Hidden In Plain Sight: Why Proving Origin Is The New Business Mandate

[MUSIC] Welcome to this episode of the Verdantix Curiosity Applied Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Skinner, a research directorate for Dantix, an independent research data and advisory firm helping you to re-imagine the big picture with granular insights. Today we'll be talking about product origin. This is one of those massive spaces that's hiding in plain sight. You'd be familiar with the more high-profile stuff. Many of us from our day-to-day lives are familiar with, for example, knockoff luxury goods coming out of China or Russian contraband or these kinds of things. And then of course there's a vast, vast underlying area of low-profile stuff. For example, manufacturers hiding in a supply chain using impure materials or slave labor or these kinds of things. So product origin is the topic of our discussion. Today we're going to be talking about de-risking your supply chain. But we have some expert guests on to help us understand the world of product origin. First of all, we have Rupert Hodges, Chief Commercial Officer at Oratain, and we have West Tucker, CEO of Tracer at the Beers Group. Let me let's have them on and introduce themselves, Rupert. Why don't you go first? Great. Thank you very much for inviting me on the show. I'm very excited to be here. I'm Rupert Hodges. I'm the Chief Commercial Officer at Oratain. I've been here since the business was a start-up 10 years ago and have been building our revenue, our client-based strategic relationships from that point. We started out in food, but we cover mostly anything really that's grown, but mostly fashion related items, cotton, still in food, working in September, leather, which we'll touch on, and extractives as well, which is relevant for the conversation with West. But yeah, thanks again. I'm excited to be here and looking forward to the conversation. Great to have you. Thank you, Rupert. Now, West, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself in your company? Yeah, thanks Ryan and Rupert. Yeah, great to be on the podcast with you. Thanks for having me. I'm West Tucker, I'm the CEO of Tracer. I've been in the role for four and a bit years, depends on when you start counting. Tracer is a diamond provenance platform. I'll go and our objective is to provide the origin, provenance, and story of every diamond that is discovered from the mining all the way through to the consumer. Over the last few years, we've hit some major milestones in terms of scale with the largest provenance platform in diamonds. I think probably in India that commodity, we cover about a quarter of the world's diamonds on our platform. We've grown to become what we've always aspired to be, which is an independent company. So moving out from the years with some external investment from companies like the GI and moving beyond that. So yeah, I really excited to be on the podcast today to discuss things, I guess, a little bit beyond diamonds, but the similarities, I think, that all companies are struggling with. And it's great to be on with Rupert and a company that I've always had really fun, fun books off. So thanks very much for having us. Absolutely. Thank you, Wes. It sounds like we've got the right two people to talk about digital development and product origin. So I think I've grasped that there's a concept known as origin fingerprint, but I wondered if you could just talk us through kind of what that means and how the technology works for the layman. Now, if we could start with you, Rupert, what is origin footprint really all about? Thanks very much. Yeah. So that's why I didn't start at the beginning. I don't want to repeat myself. We're talking about forensic science because it can be challenging. So what we do at Arotain is we measure the naturally occurring chemical elements in a product in its grown environment or its produced environment. That happens to have a unique effect on that product as it's either grown or produced. And we're measuring two naturally occurring chemical markers. So trace elements, which are, if you think of the periodic table, things like mercury gold and those kind of things. And we measure them in parts per million or parts per billion. And that can be up to 40 or 45 different trace elements in the product. So that gives us a real lot of data for us to have a look at that fingerprint. And it's really good for products that are in the raw state before they get processed, which affects the trace elements. Additionally, alongside that, we use isotopes. We look at three to five different isotopes. I won't go into an isotope explanation because everyone will be asleep before I get to the end of it. But there again, naturally occurring chemical elements that do leave the mark on a product as it's grown. It's still the environment and the atmosphere. And it's related to where the altitude, the humidity, the rainfall, a lot of other aspects develop in these isotopes. Largely chemical oxygen, the hydrogen, but we also look at a couple of others as well. And combine for these two things, they give us the ability to build a fingerprint of origin for a product which is unique to that product in that grown environment. We build a baseline, so collecting data at the point, to build the database. And then we can refer back to that database at different points of production to ensure the product is still itself. It's not been adulterated, so computed, etc. to ensure that at that point is still the product that is claiming to be. And that's very powerful to give a ground truth to a product. So you can ensure that you are getting what you think you are when you buy a product inbound at different stages, through to the finished product. Obviously that helps from a fairly layman's toes to expect on any of those points. Yeah, I know. I love it, Rupert. Thank you very much. The kind of chemistry backbone is really, really interesting. I'd be curious, when was this originally commercialized? How long has this been around as a business? Great. So actually the use of isotopes and trace elements for fingerprinting for products has actually been around for 40 years. It's been used by government services in such things as bodies and bullets and glass fragments and drug investigations for the last 40 years. So CSI, Miami, we've taken that kind of fun side of things and applied it to food and other things. Nothing so exciting. It's as a criminal side, but it is strong rep background in criminal forensic field. So really, really powerful, accepted technology, accepted science that stands up to the Dalbert standard, which means it's admissible in a court of law. So that's the background. We've take the product as a forensic product for those kind of things and applied it in the first instance to food. And then from there, we work in a lot of other products, as I mentioned, so other commodities like what in coffee, cocoa and then into it. So yeah, we've been around since 2008 and we've been to kind of take the product, use the science and a significant amount of data science. So a lot of statistical analysis that goes into it as well, that allows us to give a scalable solution on this kind of thing. So we're kind of at the forefront of how we're fingerprinting is being used from a commercial perspective and we start. So it's exciting. Excellent. Thank you, Rupert. Now, Wes, I understand that your technology is similar, but also different. Could you walk us through that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. And it's quite nice to listen to Rupert make it make a lot of sense in the sense that I think what they do is kind of the holy grail of traceability. It's the thing that you look for because there's nothing quite like chemical composition and scientific data to tell you where things come from. Tracer has a, I just sort of say we, I sort of split it into kind of three layers and obviously the fingerprinting or the identification is one of the three layers. The other two just for completeness is, obviously, it's a data platform. So we capture an enormous amount of data about diamonds and about the companies that mine, manufacturer and solar diamonds. So we create kind of like a data standard in the industry that everybody can interoperate with. And then on top of that is this kind of ethical layer. So we work with third parties that do, you know, so much and audits on companies to look at their manufacturing practices, their labor practices, their environment, both in the mining and the midstream. So, you know, if we can solve this problem that Rupert described so eloquently about fingerprinting, can we then say something good about it? I think we say, can we, can we attach data and information to it? So from a fingerprinting point of view, we approached the problem from a slightly different angle. And I was mainly, I think when we began seven or eight years ago, as a round, kind of the availability of technology, the ability to scale. We were looking for that balance between certain and scale. So, so how it works for us is the mining companies. They have these machines and we use the optics of the diamond, the sort of external of the diamond. We scan the diamonds to create a unique kind of three mesh silhouette of the diamond. We attach a few other data points to that. And then when that diamond arrives at the manufacturer, they use existing technology in the industry that is used for the planning of diamonds. So these, every diamond is put on a machine to check the inclusions and then to plan the polished arc and within the diamond. And we take the draw of that and we use algorithms to match the parameters together to prove that the one that was mine, that the one that's being manufactured at the same time. So the reason we did it that way is we wanted to achieve some minor scales. So Tobias has, I mean, like 11 machines in various parts of the countries we have about, I think about 20 in total across all our producing customers in about four or five countries that have been scanned the diamond and registers that they get on the platform. So that was kind of like in BP1, if you will, and that allowed us to put the network in place, connect up to the all. of the various supply chain players and then to scale into the industry. We had to sign a lot of data access agreements and things like that with various companies to get that working. As a kind of a next step, and I think this is where the technology that I think there is definitely the application of either kind of spectroscopy or some of the sciences that Rupert is talking about. The challenge with Darmus is that, you know, the whore, pure, they are, they're just all private. So they do have in terms of nitrogen and other things, but the more clear, the dynamic, the better the clarity, the lower the impurity. But I think what's really powerful now is because we have the data in place, we're looking to partner with companies to bring a new technology on top of that data infrastructure. So we can then take the scale and serve to do we have today, but then increase the certainty as we go. So I think that from our point of view, it may have sounded like we went with the kind of the easiest route, which we definitely did, but it achieved the enough certainty to get us where we are today. And now we're looking for for various ways of improving that certainty through the types of technology. So great. Sounds very good. Thank you for that introduction, Wes. Now, the topic of the day is really talking about de-risking the supply chain. And supply chains are under stress. There's been just in the last year, of course, a tremendous amount of developments around tariffs. And I can only imagine supply chain professionals are pretty much at their wits end at this point. So when we're looking at the kind of overlap of product origin supply chain, so what are the kind of risks that businesses are seeing today across their global supply chain? What's the kind of angle for product origin in that picture? If we can start with you, Wes. Yeah. And I think diamonds, diamonds as an industry this has never been as never been far away from some sort of scandal which you along the way. So we're well versed in trying to manage our supply chain. The way I like to think about it is you've got these kind of two macro-train that are happening. The one on the kind of left-hand side, if you will, is government and regulation. So you see it through, we use spoke about sanctions, trade restrictions, things like digital product passports and the EU, or tariff requirements, etc. And then on the right, hand side is this consumer shift. So I mean, five years ago, maybe 15% of the Americans asked where their diamonds came from on purchase and that's up to about a third, nine, and continues to grow. And so what companies are getting squeezed between these two kind of external forces, which I think is really important in terms of reading yourself for the landscape that comes in the future. From a risk point of view, there's no shortage of examples. The one I like to use at the moment is a company called Laura Piano, which is owned by 80% owned by LVMH. So companies that you should know fairly well, I think, to the podcast. They've been recently put under some sort of judicial administration in Italy because it was found that they'd outsource to a company who outsource to another company that was using undocumented workers and paying them below minimum wage to be able to manufacture a product that's salt for thousands and thousands of pounds of retail. Obviously, it had massive legislative issues for them, government issues. There's a lot more work that's going into that, now a lot more scrutiny, but then also reputation and brand risk. And most of the companies we talk to they either say that it's not really a problem for them today because their customers don't ask. And we always say, well, what happens when they do ask it? You don't know where it comes from, and you don't have an expiration to the origin of the any effort that it's fighting. And then on the regulatory side, how can you react to the changes that are happening in the landscape in terms of knowledge of where products have come from, where they're sitting, where they've been manufactured, etc. The luxury kind of space has a lot of those kind of consumer supply chain challenges, but then also with the war and Ukraine, with the sanctions on Russia, that creates quite a jolt to the supply chain and being able to understand the origin of your product and all that through is kind of fundamental ready to be able to run a business in today's day and age. Yeah. So I'm kind of hearing obviously clear reputational risks, hearing potential liability risks, potential economic risks. So that's kind of shining through very clear. Yeah. A lot of that brand risk, Rod, you know, you take company takes decades to build brand, takes a week to destroy it. I think depending on the way you sit in the industry, I think obviously if you it will be to be maybe supply into a BMW or something, a lot of sort of brand risk is maybe low, but if you are a BMW or you are a LVM8 or a LORP, that brand risk is massive. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And given the opacity in many supply chains, they're just the risk of exposure. I imagine for many of them is pretty significant. I guess Rupert, from your perspective in talking to clients from Oratane, what are you seeing supply chain professionals when they're, what are they kind of hottest about right now? What are the most concerned? Where is the issue pressing if you will? Yeah. Look, Wes is answer basically exactly right. The same thing, the same thing. I know Wes's response is into diamonds is very particular and his example about LORP, is exactly right. I mean, they kind of free main risks that stand out clearly, the integrity, integrity risk, regulatory risk and reputational risk, which is kind of also a linked to integrity, but ones, ones, ones more pressing than the other if you will. But so for us, obviously not just focused in diamonds, it's exactly what we're talking about here is if you can't prove where your product comes from, then you can't substantiate the claims that you're making about it. And that's exactly what we're helping our clients do to ensure they totally understand that the product that they are putting on the market is actually the product that they think it is. And a lot of fashion clients, so we've got 200 plus clients in the fashion space, whether it's large retailers in the US or small specific luxury brands as well in France and there to be who are actually managing one of these things exactly as Wes has pointed out. So they're already managing the more in Ukraine, the effects on supply tenders eruption. Again, Wes mentioned that they're managing geopolitical risk already. Obviously, there's some differences on a lot of different things between China and the US, for example, as well as as well as many others. And then if you layer onto that, the chaos that was caused on independence, they buy the tariffs, you know, you're looking at a whole bucket of pain for the supply chain, which is exactly to your point at the beginning there. So we are trying to help our clients by enabling them to ensure they are getting what they're getting. And again, for those suppliers to BMW that was talked about, yeah, we're helping them prove to BMW that if it were to be a product or a client we're working with, they are getting what they're paying for. But again, you know, if there is an issue by someone in a supply chain who's not a direct supplier of yours, you're still going to get hung by it if the NGO links are to, which is exactly what has happened in quite a few cases, one of which was mentioned. So it's not just about knowing your tier one, you have to note tier two, tier three, and ideally down to tier four if you can. Right. And we're working all those spaces. So as that product moves along the supply chain, as an inbound product, we have different people being able to make sure that what they've bought is exactly what it should be. And then they can pass it on without being the person who's caused the issue in the supply chain. But I wanted to, to where's his point is, to add a little bit further, you know, we're seeing a whole a whole load of those issues, for example, in diamonds where Alarossa cells to India, they're cutting India, they're declared an Indian diamond, right? That's an origin origin that touches on a number of different things, ethics at the bottom of the supply chain sanctions, as well as other things as well. And you're seeing the same thing in fuel, the oil trade is seeing exactly the same thing. As passes through other countries, it's getting claimed as a different origin. And that changes obviously what your responsibility looks like. So yeah, a whole lot there to talk about. Absolutely. It feels to me like the underlying principles here are about product knowledge essentially and the uncertainty around that. I think it was Donald Rumsfeld, who first popularized the notion of the quadrant of the knowns, right? There was the knowns, the knowns, the unknown, the unknowns, the unknown, the unknown, and I guess here, I'd be curious, Rupert, if you could tell me, like in working with some of your clients, what does that journey look like when they discover, obviously I guess the known unknowns, but even the unknown unknowns when they start getting visibility into some of these things, what does that look like? Yeah, that's funny. It's one of my favorite quotes I have used quite a lot with our clients who are trying to figure out what's going on in their supply chain. And I think the point is, if you don't know where you're getting your products from, then you are exposed to unknown unknowns. If you do know what your products are coming from and you have mapped your supply chain successfully and validated it, then actually, if something would emerge in a country that you're not sourcing from, you can have some comfort that it's not part of your supply chain and you're not going to be dragged into something that you're unaware of. Whereas if you only know that you don't get it from one place, you still don't know where it from. So that conversation is actually mapping, there's a process that clients have now having to go through and it's we're not the silver bullet, but we validate the other efforts that are being made in the supply chain. So supply chain mapping, so having a full idea of your vision from tier one down to that tier four, I was talking about declared people in it. That is one thing because in the supply chain map, there'll only be the declared ones and then you'll have people off to the side that will be being used and not declared, which is kind of where we come in. So you see a risk hit on one of all parts that you're unexpected to get it and then you investigate further, you do a site visit, you have a conversation as to why there was an issue and there were generally say, oh I did have enough product to meet my requirements. So I got it from the factory next door, which isn't a normal, that whole conversation starts to open up about what those known and unknown knowns may be and what's happening factory floor itself as well, where someone makes a mistake, but it's not declared. So all of those things are captured in a number of ways, but validated by us to say, do you have the risk or you don't have the risk on that testing on an ongoing statistically designed basis, but it's actually in conjunction with all those other parts of traceability that we put together. So for a job example with WES, they've made a huge amount of effort to go through it. If it worked for us to layer ourselves in there, we could find the spot that was right to be able to have a testing program at an uncut level, perhaps when it's a before it's a polished diamond, so that we could actually use the impurities that surround it to find the location. So there are different ways to actually decide where you should do the testing and when and how deep you go to get the best effects. That's a conversation that's very deep with a lot of these guys about the unknown on those. Sure, it starts to raise the question of willingness to know to a certain degree. I wonder if in some organizations there's not certain desire in parts of the organization to practice the here-no-evil, speak-no-evil, see-no-evil type of approach. I know we had a supply chain event last year in Amsterdam in which a big chocolate brand, Tony's Chocolate Lonely, was talking about their supply chain and they had a very supply chain lead and they were trying to market themselves as a perfectly clean supply chain. But what they found is they really, really, really dove into the details is that it was literally impossible to have a perfectly transparent and clean supply chain in the cocoa trade, at least as it's what they told us. The main supports are honestly that's good, but the bottom is, yeah, dependent on a processor, at some point in the supply chain, to aggregate the product. And once it's turned into a cocoa butter, it could be blended with a whole load of different forms that they don't own. They can tell. Right. Which is why you need to test at different points. But yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Your point is 100 percent right. So how do you, I mean, when you raised an interesting point, Western, you were talking about how the interest in the origin of diamonds has increased so much. It went from around, as you say, 15 percent. I guess one at every eight people, the one at every three people now. So clearly there is an increase. There's a greater level of interest among consumers in product origin. But how do you, how do you make it even more compelling? How do you make even more consumers care about this? That's still to my mind, two out of three who are necessarily who are kind of saying, see no evil here, no evil, I guess, or just don't think about it. How do you kind of raise this on to the agenda for the remainder of the audience? Yeah, I think that's that's fundamental because whereas a lot of these these regulatory issues, et cetera, they kind of, I think they can easily be overcome as they come so they can be retrospective and you can react to them. From a consumer point of view, if you lost the consumer in the European sea business or brand, it's very, very hard to get them back. I think that one thing that's important to keep in mind over the next five to 10 years is the rise of brands. So as a as a global trend, we're going to see more and more branded purchases and that's not just diamonds and diamond jewelry, I think it's across the patch. And what that means essentially is that consumers are looking to buy from a brand because they want to trust that brand. And so in the case where it comes to maybe diamonds or diamond jewelry, if you walk into a branded store, your expectation is that it's all taken care of. So yeah, you don't ask, you don't ask where a Tiffany diamond comes from or a Cartier diamond comes from because you assume that Tiffany and Cartier are exactly where they come from and they're the best of the best. So within that lies an inherent risk and I think you've made a very good point about the sort of two parts that I've done. If you talk to maybe a sort of the executive level of sea suite, those that are looking at the risk, et cetera, stop their mind, right? Because it's fundamental. If they can't back up the claims they're making, it'll be very difficult for them to be able to continue it. Business are now used to consumer. If you're in a more operational space and those that whose job it is, is to fill full supply jet by purchase split through the product, they're basically feed to the sea. They're not incentivized as much to manage that risk. They're incentivized to make sure that the shelves are full and that people get their product. So if you sort of think about that brand aspect, I think you're going to, you must be, we must always be cautious that we're not, the statistic is not lower because people already trust the brand. It's then innate in the fact that they do want to know where it comes from and they just assume that it is that branded product. And then I think the second part of that is we talk a lot about risk but we don't talk a lot about opportunity. And so if you were a, maybe an up and coming brand or you were a smaller company or you're a one that's looking to compete with these companies, I think that kind of radical transparency is a huge positive. And as an interesting example, we work with a lot of retailers in the US that are looking to drive greater demand for the natural diamonds. They're coming off with this kind of error of selling a lot of lab loans, aesthetic diamonds, margins of decreasing, I want to get back into natural diamonds. They're using origin, provenance, storytelling to be able to do that. That's a really positive thing. It creates net value and it differentiates them from kind of other other stores. Obviously the more that that happens, the more consumers I think go to expect it and then the more that they will see it. And then I think underneath all of that is Tracer is an example. We spend a lot of time on partnerships and collaborations and ecosystem. One of our sort of more successful partnerships is that with the GI, the telelogically issue of America, that it's the sort of foremost great legal oratory for diamonds. Most people's diamonds are engaging in the central we've gone through a GI laboratory. Through a service that we offer jointly called ProvT is essentially allowing you to have provenance and origin listed on your GI grade. It's kind of using the infrastructure that exists there. And we joke by the kind of being that FTC. So whenever you buy a diamond, they're four C's in a kind of clarity, etc. But more and more they're going to expect that is it okay? Is it ethical? Is it do we know where the orates become from, etc? We're starting and we're going to land more of this information. And that then becomes commonplace for consumers. So over the next five years, it'll be pretty unheard of to buy a hired product and not know least that it is an ethical supply chain and something that could be backed up. And if you can kind of see the self fulfilling prophecy here because the more we make the claims of brand, the more we have to justify the claim, the more we need to make the claim, the justify the claim. And that's what drives the adoption of systems to go. It doesn't really matter that it was to Rupert's point that it was someone else three steps back and supply chain that made the mistake. It's you that's fronting that as your brand and consumer. And so since you just you either hoovering up all the good stories, which is what we like to say. So you can tell about roads and schools and hospitals and investments, but you hoovering up all the risk as well. And you sit at the tail end of a pretty complex network of risk that consumers are going to be starting to ask, could predominantly more and more questions about with things like things like tariffs, things like sations, things like these things that are in the street. So if I could drill a little bit further into the kind of business side, because I can only imagine as a kind of tech company within debiers, you have to kind of quantify to the business and to potential partners the value of this. So when you're talking about with major businesses or brands and trying to quantify or arrive at a value number, if you will, of what this is really worth, how do you approach that? What does that look like? Yes, it's a great question. It's a really good question. And I think it's important, I guess, to differentiate between a true starter, which I guess you know, or a teen has gone through that journey. And I guess a corporate incubation is a little bit different, two, two subtly different things. And I joke with a lot of my friends are in the industry that have started their own businesses. And I say the things that keep you up at night, paying salaries, cash flow, etc. Or maybe, you know, they're important for us, but they're not top of the list because we have big brother to look after us. But the reverse of that comes, you know, we're a startup that has enterprise, great risk, data, security, etc. So you've got this kind of weird combination of things. The other thing that's quite interesting when I speak to a lot of other companies that do corporate innovation and do incubation is, you know, for a lady who worked for, I think, Comcast in the US, she was doing innovation for them. And she said, you know, in order for them to have, let's say they've got a portfolio of 10 or 20 things that they're investing in, in order to make any meaningful impact on that business as Comcast, that have like two or three unicorns. Otherwise, I just won't move the needle for a company of that size. Now, it is not that big, but it appears to be, it's for Tracer to get to the point where commercially it's making so much money that it matters. It's got to be a pretty big business. And I just don't know, we've always been pretty transparent about it. That's just not the space we're in. We're not in a space where we can make that level of profit. And so then the incentive becomes a little different. And this is, I think, to the core of your question is Tracer exists for a couple of reasons. It exists to support the natural diamond industry, which is a category. Pretty unique in diamonds and that appears to be creating a category and supports the category of diamonds. A diamond is forever. These companies that they ran in the 50s. But we're also there to support the years. It's support companies that are driving this kind of increase in the kind of the standards of ethical practices in the industry that use business best practices. They're far to the IJC and will diamond cuts for all these different things that help within the industry. And so our job when we work with the, with our those that support us within the Divirz, those that support us within the GIA, those that are coming as an extra under the investor is to understand that it's a bit of a two-step process. There is the kind of commercial neutrality, if you also, we do need to be able to cover our bases because we don't want to be at end cost. But actually the main driver is to enable the strategy of those businesses that operate as customers of ours. And that's that's through, you know, either being able to tell richer or meaningful stories to build up branded propositions at the downstream. And there's lots of examples of over the Christmas season of big companies launching jewelry collections that are very origin based, which we haven't seen for a very long time. And in the second and that is that supply chain risk. If you are a massive branded house, you know, one of the top three, four, five things on your board to gender is that is that a neurodress cut and companies like Tracer are built because we have the scale, the certainty, we have the enterprise grade, you know, standards of controls on ISO 2700Y. There's all of these things that are startup of our stage should not have. Conversant in the sort of enterprise ecosystem, rather than be purely conversant, it may be the tech ecosystem. And I think the last thing that gives us in during value is patience. If you're a true startup, you don't have a huge amount of patience. You've got to get like, months to month, or day to day, or week to week. If you're an incubated company, you can do things a little bit slower. You can negotiate a little bit longer. You can spend a lot more time with lawyers to get the right contracts in place to be able to manage the day or exchange of the risk. And I think that's inherently what a company like Tracer brings to larger corporates that I'm not looking to invest in something that's going to be, you know, billion dollars on the EVA or something that's going to enable the future of the EVA as well. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you, Wes. That's great. I'd like to pivot and talk about digital product passports. So Europe is pushing these in a big way. I'd be curious to hear from you, Rupert. How do you see companies using these passports to substantiate origin and sustainability claims? How are European product, or the digital product passports going to change the market? Great. Thanks, yeah. Yes, really good question. So I think what they'll do, certainly, is that the requirement leads to brands, retailers having to make many more claims that they haven't, than they ever made before in the public domain or the regulatory domain. And as they have to make more claims with the digital product passports, they have to stand by them. So the stuff we're talking about beforehand about origin will be a claim that they have to make in the public domain. And obviously there are a lot of providers in this space who are just providing a technical solution or a blockchain solution of some kind for a digital product passports without any testing along the way as we provide it. So there will be a claim that will be supported by a blockchain that shows these are the four or five or seven or eight different places that products come through. But they need the actual test to substantiate whether or not that's a case or not. So I think there's a significant amount of uplift for brands and retailers to get this done. And then there's significant amount of risk that they're going to be opening up. But going back to what Wes was talking about and your previous conversation, it's those two things, isn't it? So like what is the risk and therefore what is the impact for the company on the risk side of it? And then what's the opportunity for the integrity talking about all of the good things in a supply chain that someone is trying to do and then prove it. So when we do our service, what we always ask for is the initially what is the claim being made by the supplier of the origin? And that's the first piece that we will then test to. And if that is substantiated, then you can start to firstly manage your risk because you know it's coming from where you expected to come from. But then to talk more confidently about water or carbon or whatever else it is that's happening at that origin and say this is our usage and it's substantiated by the fact. That would be product testing and completely. Oh, that is something that will be required and DTP but also substantiated by us from a positive side of things. And conversely on the risk side, you're making more claims that you need to make sure you can substantiate them. So that's a difficult ROI. Like we're providing those services. So to previous question, the quality for an ROI on risk, although over time it becomes apparent that you've reduced your risk significantly, it's like ensuring or you're given one or five, but you know you've got to do it. And then on the positive side, if you start to want to fire your claims, your senior brand grow, grow, get increasing integrity and get a developer following, you know, for example, the work that we do with Primark to support their cotton program, which is relevant for smallholder farmers in India, women especially just support them. So they're using us to support that claim. That's very powerful. So yeah, there are good examples of how people are going to then to substantiate that and support it possibly with more integrity using ourselves or on that, improve it. Like again, like as Wes has said, I'm sure they're going to benefit from DTP because they have some really strong traceability on the back of it. Yeah, I'll let him tackle that one. Well, actually you raised, if I could just actually go a little deeper there, you're raising an interesting point about, for example, like blockchain based technologies that can verify but don't actually get to the core of the matter if you will, but what's actually in the materials, do you see any particular risk around the DPP leading to adoption of technologies that are almost like fig leaves, if you will, but don't actually solve the problem. Do we foresee that being an issue? I absolutely do. I think that is 100% why you're seeing quite a lot of the regulations that's coming out now. There are beginning to be requirements to add scientific testing to the due diligence process. So we've seen it in timber. So under EUTR, which came out quite a while ago and UKTR, the timber regulation, they're now talking about scientific testing as part of that. They did the same for flavor review for WEEFOR SLAPE Prevention Act and again, that'll be the case for the European Force Labor Act as well. But using due diligence should involve several tools and blockchain or supply chain mapping on one of them, but scientific testing validates those things. So absolutely, if you are just using a blockchain and you rely on it, that gives you a position of overconfidence because you're actually not a honours and sure and you think you're ticking the box, but actually there could be a break in the chain that you haven't identified. So don't become overly reliant on it without scientific testing. Depending on the validity of that blockchain because Trace is obviously very unique in the way they set it up. Maybe there's an opportunity for us to work together, but I'm saying that they've got a very strong proposal. But we definitely see too many people going for an easy option. Oh, well, it's a supply chain map, so I'm fine. Tick, that's not the case. I think DPP and our conversations with the regulator in Europe and the lobbying that we've been involved in has made that point. And I think that's coming through. Right. Okay. Now, go ahead. If it's the important point, right? I just want to, I saw a bullet on what we put a saying that's I think it's quite fundamental and it's probably two years of looking at it. I think the one is exactly that is, is, you know, if you go and put some strength behind the claims that you're making, it will be those are those are just kind of white washing things at the day, right? And I think, you know, that's where you see through DPP is also through things like Ressu Ukraine, it's actually, you see a ton of these little startups that pop up and all the sudden they can solve. And I, and I, you know, I get it and I'm, and I think it's really great that companies are trying to do these things. I think that there's no shortcut, unfortunately, to something that is complex as the thing that we're talking about. I think what is interesting for me in the DPP space is that I think what most companies will end up doing is they'll do exactly that they'll just take the cheapest, quickest, easiest option. They'll put it there, they'll put a couple of different sorts on it, they got themselves a DPP and they know what they come from. What's super fascinating about that is it means that essentially companies are now starting to make a legislative claim, a claim against the legislation of knowledge of a product that they can't actually justify or actually explain it in any way. And so as they start doing that more and more a year on year, the level of risks that they're building up for themselves and that are some sort of substantive origins or sort of testing in the background is going to become almost exponential for them. And so it becomes for us, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, is that the agribival needs guys, well, I say to a lot of customers, just pick, pick, pick, whatever the DPP solution you want. They just know that all roads will end with something with a degree of certainty behind it, because it has to, otherwise, you know, the whole product will fall apart. And so I think DPP specifically in the EU is something that's going to drive a massive amount of adoption of these types of technologies and space. And actually our approach is let anybody go forth and do it. And actually if you can do what we do better than we can do a cheaper than you can do, see our previous goal of supporting industry, and that's fine, by all means go forth to conquer. Kind of being seven or eight years into this, I can tell you it's not that easy. So, you know, unless something really special happens, the next look is difficult. But for companies, you know, they're going to have to adopt the DPP framework. And I caution them to say just, you know, yeah, to do it, but don't choose, choose the cheapest easiest option, because you're just going to tie yourself to the next two to three years as the legislation improves and as your claims are going to get very dry, because you know, making them for every product you sell in the European Union. It's an incredibly, incredibly powerful system that's coming in place. And I think other countries will probably continue to it. Right. Okay. People face the risk of getting what they pay for to a certain degree here. So I'm going to give each of you an interesting opportunity, right? So we'll start with you, Rupert. You're going to go into an elevator. As it turns out, there's a CEO and the elevator, you know her actually in the company that she leads. And you know, they haven't seriously considered verification. So it's you're going up together to, I don't know, 100th floor or something. You got like 45 60 seconds to convey the one most important or urgent message to her. What do you say? Well, I'd probably start with listening to this podcast. cost. Because all of those things that we've talked about are the priorities. So, you know, I think that it is really two things that they need to consider. You know, that's, and that is managing risk and pushing integrity. So it is that those two layers are super important and being able to do it with really valuable data wherever it comes from. So choose your partners carefully to give you absolutely the right insights into your supply chain so that you can act. So again, it's so important to know where your products are coming from in this world, all the risks that we've talked about and in the opportunities to build brand and promote good actions that you're taking. So it is covering off all of the points that Donald Ranzfeld made and that is what you have to do. You do have to, it's not, no, so any in blindness is not an excuse anymore. You absolutely have to know what's going on in your supply chain because you will either be thanked for it or hung for it or most likely hung for it. It is in the first instance. So I would encourage her, whatever she does is to ensure she has proper insights into a supply chain. She chooses the right partners for that purpose and obviously as it's an elevator pitch, that would be us as well. It's part of a overall solution but not as a self. Ding, you've arrived and she is duly impressed. She's going to look into her and listen to this podcast. Yes, exactly. So Wes, same opportunity for you. So you're getting into the elevator. What's that key message you want to convey to her? Yeah, absolutely. I like the plugging the podcast that I'll give you a few afterwards. Yeah, for me, it's always kind of lead with the question which is like, what do you, what business do you want to be? Where do you want your business to go? And I think there's two types of those. There are those that are building a brand, a reputation and enduring value and are those that are there just to sell to packets on the corner for the next two weeks and they're going to move on thereafter. If you're building brand and enduring value, one of the fundamental risks to use of supply chain, absolutely without a doubt. And if you try to protect that brand from some sort of a crisis, the prediction is that that crisis will come from something in your supply chain, not necessarily from something directly in your business. And so if that's what you're trying to build and you want to build something that's going to last for two to three, four, five generations, you really need to understand where the output product, what your product comes from. And for us, that is always an open question. I work with anybody. It doesn't matter to us really at the end of the day because all roads lead to the best solution on the market. And that's what we want to be. We want to be the absolute leader in the market. We don't want to drop our standards. And if your company's not ready for that, and maybe that example of like I think you use Coco or something is the example of all we can't do it. It's not possible. And you go, that's fine. If it's not possible for you, we're over here with you really because it is possible for a lot of your competitors. And that's where I would kind of leave it there. And hopefully always joking. Never enough to order up buildings in London. We'll have to imagine we're in Collar and Pura, maybe something like that. Yeah, exactly. No, I think it's exactly those two things that we've talked about in various different browsers, it's promote and protect. And to do that, you need to have clarity in your supply chain, you need to have certainty. And those are the things that are so valuable. And I think in various different ways, we've touched on those in nearly every answer. I love it. Thank you guys very much. I think there's this notion of the curse of knowledge and there's also the blessing of knowledge. It would feel for people who are engaged in business today and managing a supply chain. Increasingly, you need to have that knowledge and the knowledge that you can actually rely on. And sleep well at night, knowing. And so I think some of these developments are really, really compelling and interesting ones. And so the notion of the origin, fingerprint and product origin is one that's only going to grow, I think, in importance and interest. So I will with that, I think wrap up and say thank you very much to both of you, Rupert and Wes for your compelling insights into the space. And I look forward to future conversations. Thank you both. Thank you for listening to this episode of Curiosity Applied by Bidantics. If you enjoyed today's conversation, then please leave a positive review and subscribe to Curiosity Applied, wherever you listen to your podcasts. Special thanks as always to my amazing production team. [BLANK_AUDIO]