Merck KGaA Pilots Cocoa Traceability On Hedera

The Hashgraph Group, Merck KGaA and PwC Germany said Tuesday they are piloting a cocoa traceability system that links physical authentication scans to records written on the Hedera network, less than four months before the European Union’s deforestation regulation starts applying to large and medium operators.

No cocoa company appears in the announcement. The three partners disclose no tonnage, no farm count, no cost and no date for moving past a pilot, and the release carries quotes only from the three technology vendors selling the system. It is the third announcement about the passport platform since February with no named customer, and the second involving Merck KGaA, the Darmstadt-based science and technology company that operates as EMD in the United States and Canada and is unrelated to Merck & Co.

Large and medium operators must comply with Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 from Dec. 30, 2026, with micro and small operators following on June 30, 2027, according to the European Commission. Cocoa is one of seven commodities in scope, alongside cattle, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood.

The Polygon Problem

What the regulation demands is coordinates. Article 9 requires operators to collect and keep for five years “the geolocation of all plots of land” where the commodity was produced, plus the date or time range of production. The regulation defines geolocation as latitude and longitude to at least six decimal places, and for plots above four hectares as a polygon tracing the perimeter. Any deforestation on a listed plot disqualifies everything grown on it.

Merck’s M-Trust technology addresses a different question. It embeds security markers in products or packaging and confirms, when scanned, that the item is the one the record describes. The Hashgraph Group’s TrackTrace platform writes that scan to Hedera with a timestamp. Neither step produces the farm polygon, which still has to be surveyed at the first mile and entered by whoever buys the beans.

“M-Trust verifies that the product being scanned is genuine, while TrackTrace records that authentication event as part of the product’s digital history,” said Thomas Endress, Executive Director and Head of M-Trust at Merck, in the release.

Husen Kapasi, Enterprise Blockchain Lead at PwC Germany, located the value in recalls, saying the system maintains “a verifiable trail not only of the finished product, but also of its raw materials, including their quality and compliance history.” He said that becomes useful “in the event of a food recall or a compliance investigation.”

Four Percent Is The Floor

Article 25 of the regulation requires member states to set fines whose maximum is “at least 4 % of the operator’s or trader’s total annual Union-wide turnover in the financial year preceding the fining decision,” and to raise that figure “where necessary, to exceed the potential economic benefit gained.” The 4% is the minimum ceiling member states have to set, calculated on EU-wide revenue.

Non-compliant operators also face confiscation of the products and of any revenue from them, exclusion from public procurement for up to twelve months, and a ban on placing the goods on the market for serious or repeated breaches.

Food Is Exempt

The release also positions the pilot for “the broader shift toward Digital Product Passports under ESPR.” The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which created the digital product passport and entered into force on July 18, 2024, does not apply to cocoa. Article 1(2)(a) excludes food as defined in Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, alongside feed, medicines, live plants and animals.

The Hashgraph Group’s own TrackTrace launch in February listed textiles, construction materials, batteries and electronics as the product groups the passport regime will cover. Food was not among them.

Five Million Farmers

The traceability problem the partners describe is documented. Cocoa is grown by an estimated five million to six million farmers, most of them smallholders, and West Africa produced 77.3% of the world crop in the 2020/21 season, according to the International Cocoa Organization. Côte d’Ivoire alone accounted for 43.3% and Ghana for 20.2%. Beans from thousands of plots move through village buyers and intermediaries before reaching a processor, which is what makes plot-level geolocation expensive to produce.

Built On June’s Deal

The cocoa pilot extends an integration the same two companies announced on June 9, when The Hashgraph Group said it would connect M-Trust scanning to TrackTrace passports and said a first working supply-chain pilot would be announced soon. PwC Germany is the addition, credited in the release with mapping business processes, defining workflows and running the training for enterprise deployment.

The Hashgraph Group is a Swiss venture-building company that builds on Hedera. Hedera has been the venue for enterprise and tokenization pilots for years; the network launched an asset tokenization studio in September 2024, and The Hashgraph Association, the Swiss non-profit alongside the group, set up a $250 million venture studio with Saudi Arabia’s investment ministry in February 2024.

Stefan Deiss, CEO and co-founder of The Hashgraph Group, framed the cocoa work as a template. “By integrating TrackTrace with Merck’s M-Trust technology and PwC’s process expertise, we can link any physical product, not limited to cocoa, to a trusted digital record,” he said.

HBAR Near Eight Cents

HBAR traded at $0.077, down 2.5% over 24 hours and is up 5.9% over seven days, for a market value of $3.5 billion, according to CoinGecko. The token is 86% below its September 2021 high of $0.5692.

Hedera’s DeFi footprint is small next to the enterprise pipeline. Total value locked on the network stood at $27.3 million, and $1.4 million of 24-hour DEX volume, according to DefiLlama. The chain processed about 593,500 transactions and counted 3,831 active addresses over 24 hours.