News Release

Thursday 12th May 2022

ubloquity appoints former Asda VP John Buxton as its Commercial Director

The UK’s foremost digital chain of provenance expert ubloquity is delighted to announce the appointment of John Buxton as its commercial director. John previously spent two years at legal tech consultancy SYKE – where he was VP Business Development and helped the company scale its business and double in size.

ubloquity specialises in reducing food fraud, tackling food waste and removing inefficiencies within food value supply chains. It does this by utlising blockchain technology, digital asset identification and validation. Its aim is to revolutionise how food is produced, manufactured, shipped and distributed, providing transparency and visibility from farm to fork.

Rob Chester, ubloquity’s CEO said: “We’re building a world-class team who will help take the company to the next level. Securing John’s services is a real coup. He has an amazing track-record at blue chip companies like GE Capital where he was head of operations in their Global Finance division, he ran factories for Heinz, Coca-Cola, and Nestle. And at Asda he headed up the transport and network strategy team before becoming Vice President for Store Proposition.” 

John joins the ubloquity senior leadership team with immediate effect, working alongside colleagues who are based across the UK and Europe. Kieran Kelly, ubloquity’s co-founder and CTO added: “Although our roots are here in Northern Ireland, we are already an international operation. Our IT board director Alin is based in Romania and manages a team of engineers there and in the Czech Republic. John will be situated in Yorkshire, England alongside our CEO Rob. However, with his support, we intend to open a presence in the coming weeks in the Republic of Ireland to help drive forward our frictionless border businesses.”

ubloquity was founded in July 2021, following a successful round of seed funding where it secured more than £2m from early investors. It currently employs 12 people and has a projected strong year one revenue.

John said: “It’s great to be part of such an exciting blockchain-enabled company. It has high growth potential, and products with multiple use cases and applications. My role is to maximise that potential, while applying the rigour you’d expect at a more established company. We’ll continue to have the agility of a start-up but we’ll adopt the mindset of a market-leader.”

ubloquity was initially established as a food provenance platform, enabling its customers to trace their products back to the most relevant start point in the supply chain. It has since diversified, serving multiple sectors across the value chain from logistics providers to livestock producers, retailers to regulators, pharmaceutical firms to food and beverage companies. Its platform was built on blockchain to enable NI farmers to create a digital twin for each of their cattle that they could register at birth, then track its entire lifecycle. 

Kieran added: “We smart-tagged individual beef animals with a DNA/RFID tags linked to the farmer along with a unique geofence created by ubloquity around the boundaries of the farm. This was a revolutionary piece of innovation in the digital identification of animals, attracting attention not only from forward-thinking farmers but also the industry at large.”

Following Brexit, ubloquity has developed other revenue streams utilising the ubloquity platform to meet specific market needs for manufacturers within NI to transport animal products in and out of the country in a frictionless way. 

Ends 

Notes for editors:

• ubloquity is an award-winnng start-up based near Banbridge. In April it was recognised by FSB Northern Ireland as the Start-Up Business of the Year. Kieran Kelly, CTO and co-founder is also a finalist in the Innovative Start-Up category in the Northern Ireland region of the National Start-Up Awards. And Ellen Marks, ubloquity’s agri tech manager was awarded the One to Watch in the Future award in the Women In Tech Awards. The awards are organised by Women in Business, Northern Ireland’s leading support network for women in the workplace.
• ubloquity specialises in creating the foundational platform required to underpin a digital trust network. It’s blockchain technology captures multiple sources of data, processes and verifies that data, enabling the trust ecosystem to function, while delivering value to each participant in the network.
• ubloquity originated as a food provenance platform, enabling customers to trace their products back to the most relevant start point in the supply chain.
• Now its technology underpins a unique end-to-end solution to improve transport security and enable frictionless trade across borders, with the potential to revolutionise how goods move back and forth between countries, speeding up regulatory checks saving hauliers time and money.
• Because ubloquity can prove the origins of products and capture each step of a complex supply chain, it can deliver real-world benefits such as reducing instances of food fraud or preventing shipment of fake medicines

For more information or to arrange an interview with John, please contact:

Dom Burch
dom@ubloquity.io

Or

Claire Bonner
C.Bonner@morrowcommunications.com
Morrow Communications