Fibre producer Asahi Kasei Europe has joined a pioneering project on blockchain technology for the ISCC PLUS certification scheme.

Led by the Dutch software provider Circularise and the Japanese trading company Marubeni, the project aims at enhancing the efficiency of the certification process and the integrity of the certified data.

In order to achieve its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, Asahi Kasei is currently enhancing activities around the utilisation of bio-based and recyclable materials, as well as renewable energy sources.

To ensure full reliability and transparency, the company is accelerating the certification of its more sustainable materials responding to the changing needs of the customers. 

The ISCC PLUS certification is a leading global certification scheme that links the supply chain from raw materials such as biomass feedstock and recycled materials to finished products through mass balance management. This helps to guarantee full transparency of the final products to the end user. With both reliability of the certification and efficiency of the certification process increasingly growing in importance, Asahi Kasei Europe decided to participate in the pilot project.

“We aim to contribute to a sustainable society through our business,” said Akira Nishizawa, managing director of Asahi Kasei Europe. “As a supplier of plastics, fibres and synthetic rubber, the ISCC PLUS mass balance certification is becoming more important for us.”

In addition to the project leader Circularise, ten companies across the entire supply chain participated in the project, including chemical manufacturers, trading companies,and consumer electronics manufacturers. The mass balance management of ISCC PLUS certification was operated on Circularise software, and the ten companies conducted trial runs, testing the effectiveness of the system, as well as the material traceability and data verification.

The results of the trials confirmed that in addition to the system’s efficiency, the utilisation of blockchain technology ensures full confidentiality in the data transmission process across the entire supply chain, appropriate mass balance management and full data reliability.

“Many of our products are currently in the process of obtaining ISCC PLUS certification,” Nishizawa concluded. “This still takes much effort and time and a more efficient certification process is needed. We have found that digital technology can play a major role in this process.”

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