The demand for transparent supply chains is intensifying, driven by increasingly discerning consumers and mounting regulatory pressures – not least from the recently implemented Critical Raw Materials Act.

Recent studies show that consumers are increasingly conscious about the origins of the products they purchase, and pay particular attention to ethical sourcing and environmental impact. Moreover, consumers are demanding greater transparency, wanting to know details about where and how products are sourced and manufactured and the overall environmental impact.

However, many companies face substantial challenges in meeting these expectations. A study by Deloitte highlights that only 13 per cent of manufacturers across all sectors can fully map their supply chains, with most struggling to see beyond their tier-2 suppliers. To address these challenges, startups are increasingly leveraging blockchain technology to track products throughout the supply chain.

One such startup is Minespider, a Berlin-based company whose blockchain-based product passport can provide a comprehensive digital history of product provenance, ESG metrics, carbon emissions data, compliance records, due diligence reports, and recycling information.

A more flexible approach to blockchain traceability

Unlike other blockchain tracking systems, Minespider’s product passport technology can be applied at any stage of the value chain.

Minespider CEO Nathan Williams explained how it works: “If I would sell you one tonne of metal, I would record the type of metal, myself as the sender, and you as the receiver. If you then use that metal to create a container full of components, you would create a new product passport for the container, list yourself as the sender, your customer as the receiver, and link it to the original metal shipment I sent you.”

This flexibility allows suppliers to start tracking from any point in the supply chain, even if they are initially unable to map their suppliers beyond the first tier. This enables companies to get started quickly and to create a system that can grow with their market knowledge.

The flexible design of the Minespider product passports particularly benefits artisanal mines, which often lack digital infrastructure. By starting traceability at the buying site, where the buyer creates profiles of the miners and conducts due diligence, Minespider can help even these smaller operations participate in the traceability process.

The breakthrough project

Currently, Minespider is tracking 10 percent of the world’s tin, amounting to 30,000 tonnes per year, through their project with Minsur, a leading mining company based in Peru with customers all over the world.

This project, which started as a proof of concept back in 2019, was supported by a consortium of companies including Google, Cisco, SGS, and VW.

“We had a lot of learnings from those early days of traceability and spent a lot of time iterating and making design changes to the system and how it works”, says Nathan. “We launched the full-scale rollout with an article in Bloomberg in September of 2023 and have been expanding our collaboration ever since.”

According to Nathan, this large-scale traceability project marked a watershed moment for Minespider: “It took just one company to have faith to start the ball rolling. We hope it will get others thinking the same and encourage widespread adoption.”

Besides the pioneering project with Minsur, Minespider has also reached other significant milestones. In December 2022, they won the ABB Accelerating Circularity Startup Challenge, an innovation challenge to apply digital product passports to downstream products such as motors and drive systems to better help their customers make recycling decisions.

“In the challenge, we combined our digital product passport solution with AI agents that are able to help customers better understand the products they have in their supply chain, and to evaluate whether it would be better to repair, replace, or recycle them, and if so, how,” Nathan explained.

Partnership with EIT RawMaterials

EIT RawMaterials has been a key supporter of Minespider since the beginning. In 2020, Minespider received funding as part of the EIT RawMaterials Booster support in response to the COVID-19 crisis, which helped Minespider develop OreSource, a due diligence product assisting mines and smelters in capturing key information for compliance with EU Conflict Mineral Regulation, which came into force in January 2021.

Minespider was also part of the EIT RawMaterials-funded Raw Material Radar (RMR) Consortium, which promoted fairer and responsible ASM mining practices in Liberia and Western Africa by creating a new software-plus-hardware solution for tracking raw materials. The RMR platform combined blockchain and IoT technologies to automatically record and track minerals’ origin, ownership, and provenance.

“Apart from the funding, being part of the EIT RawMaterials network was incredibly helpful, connecting us to different players within the European raw materials ecosystem,” said Nathan.

Overcoming challenges on the path to success

While Minespider is now a leading blockchain traceability startup, the journey hasn’t always been easy. “There are so many challenges and many of them cannot be anticipated or prepared for easily,” said Nathan.
Nathan describes his entrepreneurial journey as not a steady upward climb, but rather a series of plateaus for learning and preparation, followed by moments of significant growth.

“Those moments of growth are the strongest memories. The first big moment was at the end of 2017. I had spent the year meeting with anyone who would speak to me to learn about the challenges of mineral supply chains and blockchain system design. At the end of this period, I wrote a white paper about how to design a blockchain system to manage a chain of custody from mine to smelter. This paper was cited by the Responsible Minerals Initiative in their official blockchain guidelines, marking the transition to being considered a serious player in the traceability industry.”

One major challenge Nathan highlights is the difficulty in working with large established companies, which can take much longer to engage with startups. “It can be quite difficult finding the right point of contact, let alone signing a contract and getting paid. It takes a lot of work to find product-market fit, and even when you find it, the sales cycles are long enough that they can really hurt startups that aren’t prepared for them,” he explained.

Based on his experience, Nathan shared some valuable advice for other entrepreneurs:

“Control your burn rate. Raw Materials is an old industry and moves slowly to adopt new technologies. Deals will always take longer than you expect, no matter how confidently someone assures you that it will go through. Companies who control their cash flow are the companies that make it.”

A transparent future

Nathan envisions a world where tracked, responsible products are the norm rather than the exception. 

“Companies should be able to know where the materials come from, and under what conditions they were produced. And once it becomes just a normal way of doing business, then it will be the negative players who are outliers, as opposed to the other way around.”

Minespider showcased their technology at the Innovation Village and participated in the Investor Day at this year’s Raw Materials Summit in Brussels. The next summit is scheduled for May 13-15, 2025.