Putting a scannable provenance record on every bale

Priya Raman finished a data science degree and went looking for a problem where better records were worth real money. She found it in the gap between a New Zealand woolshed and a European brand's compliance team.

Baleprint ties each bale to the farm, the mob, the shearing date and the audited animal welfare standard, then keeps that record attached through scouring and spinning. A brand scans a code and gets a chain of custody instead of a statutory declaration.

Fifty-one growers are on the platform. The premium is small per kilogram and very large per season, and Priya argues that traceability is about to stop being a premium at all and start being the price of entry.