SBI Traceability co., Ltd (HQ: Minato-ku, Tokyo, Representative director: Tomohito Wajima) announces that SHIMENAWA, a traceability service to protect brands through blockchain technologies, was installed at Izumibashi Shuzo Co., Ltd. (HQ: Ebina City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Representative: Yuichi Hashiba). Izumibashi Shuzo thoroughly performs Sake production from rice cultivation to brewing, as a ‘cultivation & brewing brewery’ in Ebina City and its neighboring district.

  Launched in 2003, Izumibashi Shuzo’s dragonfly-marked label “Tonbo Label” celebrates its 20^th anniversary this year and is gradually recognised across the world. This time, 6^th generation master’s dream (of introducing as high polishing ratio as 20%) came true under a strong determination. ‘The Sake is unprecedented and considered very special. This is why we chose to adopt SHIMENAWA technologies’, the master says.

  Through a digital pairing technology of blockchain and NFC tags, SHIMENAWA protects product brands by providing an authenticity certificate, destination tracking (useful for a prevention of fake products) and bottle opening signals. Authenticity certificate and traceability functions will ensure producer’s responsibility to deliver authentic products, which could help to seize a higher level of trust from consumers.

  In addition, bottle opening signals allow consumers to recognize the opening of the products by themselves to feel more secured about conditions of the products.

  This function is also useful to obtain information of when and where the product was opened (consumed) as breweries can utilize this information to strategically administrate its business.

  Blockchain aims to track the values by sharing the history of data modification on the network using the modification detecting system.

*1  Blockchain is a technology enabling a preservation of values by sharing data modification history on the network. Electronic signature and hash pointer are used for their tamper-resistant data structures. The technology is useful to build trustable end-to-end traceability system by sharing certificates for authenticity and quality of physical assets.

*2　NFC (Near field communication) tag technology is a high frequency NFC band technology that enables to provide unique IDs to physical assets, and strongly associate these IDs with important information stored in blockchain. The technology is used for credit cards and My Number Cards (Japanese social security cards)

Brewery’s Profile

Brewery name: Izumibashi Shuzo Co., Ltd.

Address: 5-5-1 Shimo-Imaizumi, Ebina City, Kanagawa Prefecture

Representative: Yuichi Hashiba, Representative Director (6^th generation owner)

Representative Brands: Izumibashi, Tombo (Dragonfly) Label

Brief introduction:

  Izumibashi Shuzo was founded to start the Sake brewing in 1857 of the Edo Period, at Ebinagochi (海老名耕地), taking advantage of its natural resources such as abundant rice and the water source from the Tanzawa Mountains.

  Claiming its motto “Sake brewing starts with rice cultivation”, the brewery is one of the rare brewers that is known as a brewery to perform both Sake rice cultivation and brewing. Rice is cultivated in Ebina City and neighboring areas. Izumibashi Shuzo carefully brews Sake using trustable rice grown with affluent sunlight and blessings of land, taken care by the brewery itself. The brewery sticks to the traditional Sake brewing methods, and all of its production is Junmai Sake.

  The red dragonfly symbol embraces nostalgic sensation towards hometown. Red dragonfly is a representative of a life in the rice farms. Thus we associate the image of dragonfly with sustainable and safe farming style and it simultaneously expresses our wishes of preserving the region and the country where wild dragonflies fly around in the rich nature.  

URL: https://izumibashi.com/

NFC tags with SHIMENAWA marks

  These NFC tags exclusively developed for Sake, and marked as “SHIMENAWA” were developed in collaboration with Uni Tag  (HQ: Chuo-ku Tokyo, Representative Director: Takuya Hanno) to be used at Izumibashi Shuzo.

  This exclusive NFC tags are used to provide innovative service in the upcoming world of Web3.

Company Profiles

Company name: SBI Traceability, Co., Ltd.

Address: 1-6-1 Roppongi, Izumi Garden Tower, Minato-ku, Tokyo

Representative: Tomohito Wajima, Representative Director

Business: Offering traceability service through blockchain system etc.　　

URL: https://www.sbitraceability.co.jp/

Company name: Uni Tag CO., LTD

Address: 4-11-2 Nihonbashi Honcho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo ( inside the Kisco Ltd Tokyo Office)

Representative: Takuya Hanno, Representative Director

Business: Consulting including design, development, production, sales and technological service of RFID

URL: https://www.unitag.co.jp/

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