Bachelor thesis by Vemund Holte Igesund & Fredrik Sebastian Rognstad – Molde University College

Our bachelor thesis sheds light on the problem consumers have when buying fish products. At the time of purchase, consumers have little to no information about the products, and have no choice but to trust all the players in the product’s supply chain. After reading through articles and studies, it turns out that there are a high number of seafood scammers. One solution we have found is for players to use better traceability systems. The requirement for tracking today is a “one up, one down” system. Every actor in a supply chain only needs to know who they are buying the product from, and who they are selling it to, one step up and one step down.

The aim of our case study has been to find out what we as consumers had to do to get the history of three selected fish products from different grocery stores and a fish product from a restaurant. We tried to trace all the products back to the fisherman / breeder and map the supply chains. After trying to track fish products ourselves, we conclude that the “one up, one down” model is not good enough. We also conclude that the traceability systems actually implemented today are not transparent enough for consumers. We have found a possible solution to the problem that will have the opportunity to make the supply chain of fish products more transparent to consumers. It is a traceability system that uses blockchain technology.

The reason why we have chosen blockchain as a possible solution to the problem comes from three of the characteristics of blockchain: immutable, transparent and decentralized. In the work on our task, we were much in dialogue with the company UNISOT, which has recently developed a traceability system that uses blockchain technology for tracking fish products. In the conclusion, we discuss, among other things, what our case study would have looked like if the fish products from Experiments A to D had been integrated into a traceability system such as UNISOT has developed.

Read more about our Bachelor thesis (in Norwegian)