<p align="justify">By early 2022, Zhongguang Yiyun Supply Chain Management Co. Ltd. had spent six years developing its supply chain management (SCM) and supply chain finance (SCF) platform, ToTrade. The platform collaborated with multiple banks and focal companies to provide integrated SCF services to over 1,000 upstream and downstream small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in China’s Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai Provinces. But the site of competition in the Chinese SCF market had shifted from a single company’s SCF capability to its integrated SCF network. Therefore, it was crucial for ToTrade to establish a robust financial supply network in order to enhance the implementation and development of its SCF services. As the volume of ToTrade’s SCF service increased, the company faced key questions: How could ToTrade develop its network to further support its SCF development? And how could the platform effectively evaluate its SCF service performance to better guide this development?
In 2020, the chief executive officer of Zhida Environmental Technology, a waste management company based in Nanjing, China, was considering adopting blockchain technology into the company’s work process. With the concept of Internet plus recycling, the company was committed to waste sorting and had introduced innovative household waste solutions. However, new challenges were emerging, including stagnant resident participation rates, low profit returns, competitor expansion, and limited support from the local government. Inherent blockchain technology functions such as digital token services, a transparent recycling chain, and collaborative governance mechanisms could potentially improve the company’s current operations and provide a first mover position in the market. However, the chief executive officer had to thoroughly consider the decision of adopting blockchain technology: What true value could it offer and what potential challenges could arise?
Food safety and fraud were long-standing issues in China. For some imported products, such as Australian beef steak, food fraud could be a massive issue: consumers could purchase the wrong or even harmful products, and legitimate brands subsequently lost sales and reputation. BeefLedger Ltd. (BeefLedger) was an Australian blockchain start-up company that aimed to solve these issues by using blockchain technology to supply authentic beef products to customers in China and elsewhere. The technology also significantly improved transparency in the beef supply chain. Since 2017, BeefLedger had gained important experience in this area and achieved a certain level of success.<br><br>The concept of blockchain, proposed in late 2008 and used successfully used in finance since then, was still in its infancy in other areas. The next promising field to adopt blockchain was supply chain management, where the technology had the potential to revolutionize the supply chain with its unique functions, including immutability and decentralization. However, many challenges emerged for BeefLedger during blockchain implementation—especially in early 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and Australia–China tensions. BeefLedger now had to determine how to handle these recent challenges.
In early 2016, the newly appointed recycling planning coordinator for an industry-leading food packaging and processing company, Tetra Pak International SA (Tetra Pak), was reviewing his company's recent success in creating a recycling chain in China. By 2015, Tetra Pak China had successfully created a recycling chain system, increasing China’s recycling rate from almost zero in 2004 to 28 per cent. It had done so by following a four-stage process: scanning the recycling market, building awareness and selecting partners, creating recycling capacity, and securing the recycling capacity. While the recycling planning coordinator was pleased with this recent success, he knew that questions remained: How could Tetra Pak continuously motivate recyclers to grow? How could Tetra Pak support recycling activities to achieve an even higher recycling rate? How could Tetra Pak achieve its recycling targets without much financial support?