IOTA Brings Seafood Supply Chains On-Chain With Kalalohko Partnership

• IOTA adds Kalalohko to its Business Innovation Program to trace seafood from hook to plate and improve transparency for supply chains.
• Kalalohko plans to use IOTA Identity, Notarization, and Gas Station to verify provenance and sponsor fees for a smoother user flow.

IOTA has added seafood traceability to its enterprise product suite as Kalalohko joined the IOTA Business Innovation Program. The initiative aims at bringing transparency and accountability to global seafood supply chains, supporting local fishermen and reducing reliance on opaque intermediaries. IOTA said the work will use public digital infrastructure to record provenance data and enable verification from “hook to plate.”

Kalalohko is an EU-funded project focused on rebuilding the seafood supply chain with clearer records and fairer participation for stakeholders. The project is targeting long-standing issues in the sector, including limited visibility into sourcing, pricing pressure on small operators, and complex distribution chains that can reduce local economic benefits. 

IOTA described the partnership as a real-world adoption case that links physical trade activity to onchain records.

The program follows IOTA’s recent focus on trade and logistics. As CNF reported, the network has increased real-world integration with live trade systems in Kenya and the UK, and it has also held active talks in ASEAN countries. It has also outlined a broader plan to connect trade flows to public blockchains with regulated, technology-neutral infrastructure designed for production use.

Kalalohko to Use IOTA Identity and Notarization

Kalalohko will use IOTA Identity to create digital identities for participants across the logistics chain. These identities will target actors in fishing companies, transport providers, and final buyers, attaching relevant data to certified entities. This is aimed at minimizing information disparities, which usually prevail between catch, processing, shipping, and final sale.

The project is also to be equipped with IOTA Notarization to document the major supply chain events in an unalterable manner. This would enable customers and partners to trace the progress of a product and ensure that the records are what was reported at previous stages in the chain. The network described notarization as a single record of a fish’s path from capture to delivery, supporting provenance checks for restaurants, municipalities, and other buyers.

To simplify user experience, Kalalohko will rely on the IOTA Gas Station model, which can sponsor transaction fees so participants do not need to hold tokens to write supply chain updates. This setup is designed for operational settings where fishermen and logistics actors may want simple tools that work without added crypto steps.

IOTA also linked the partnership to rising demand for verifiable sourcing. It cited upcoming EU regulations and noted recent sustainability-related reclassification actions in the seafood sector that increase interest in traceable data. The two partners aim to extend the same model to other industries with similar supply chain dynamics, including artisanal goods and other protein categories.

IOTA’s broader strategy continues to center on real-world assets, data, and identity. As CNF reported, IOTA unveiled a “Blue Ocean” strategy, positioning its network as a venue for tokenizing and transacting real-world information on-chain. 

IOTA trades at $0.08633 at press time, a 1.41% rise in the past 24 hours.