By Mahika Ravi Shankar

Mahika is Editor-in-Chief at Trade Finance Global (TFG). Mahika holds a Masters of Arts with Honours (MA Hons) degree in Economic History from the University of Edinburgh.

Last updated on 07 Sep 2026

• Brazilian exporters are turning to blockchain to meet increasingly complex EU proof-of-origin and supply chain documentation requirements.
• Blockforce and the Cardano Foundation’s solution keeps commercial data private while anchoring verifiable records on the public Cardano blockchain.
• The platform aims to help smaller suppliers remain connected to EU-facing supply chains as traceability and sustainability requirements tighten.

For a Brazilian exporter based outside the city centre, with potentially patchy and expensive internet connectivity, proof of origin has not been a concern in the centuries they have been operative. If asked, they would tend to type up an Excel document on the spot.

Now, with complicated and ever-growing stacks of supply chain documentation coming out of Brussels, they must document their processes more thoroughly.

Guilherme Pereira, Ecosystem Growth Specialist for LatAm at the Cardano Foundation, a Swiss-based not-for-profit providing blockchain solutions, cited the European Union’s (EU) Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) as the most complicated requirement Brazilian exporters face. He explained to Trade Finance Global (TFG) how non-EU exporters selling into the EU must prove which plot of land a product came from, using exact GPS coordinates, to show no deforestation has occurred there since 2020.

After two delays, the rule took effect for large and medium companies on 30 December 2026, with micro and small enterprises given a further six months. For Brazil, key industries of soy, beef, coffee and timber are most exposed. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) rules and digital product passports add further supplier-level reporting requirements.

But when a European buyer sends an audit questionnaire, typical Brazilian farmers can respond largely in analog: an invoice in one system, a supplier list in another, and proof of origin as a PDF in an email.

Blockforce and the Cardano Foundation have just gone live with a solution designed to simplify this process through the blockchain. On the system, supplier lists, contracts, and pricing sit on a private network; only a cryptographic fingerprint of each record is anchored to the public Cardano blockchain, where any auditor, customer or regulator can confirm a record’s validity without seeing it contents.

“Our clients’ challenge has always been to go beyond knowing their own chain and actually prove it, without exposing suppliers and contracts to competitors,” said André Salem, CEO of Blockforce. “Our proprietary blockchain architecture […] delivers both to the market: commercial data stays private, and only the proof goes to the public network.”

More than 500,000 supply chain records have already been recorded this way, and the platform is live with Latin America’s (LatAm) largest fashion group, AZZAS 2154, which is using it to trace its leather chain.

“We don’t ask suppliers to learn new systems,” Pereira said. “Instead, we fit our technology into what they already produce, like electronic invoices and official government records, and let artificial intelligence (AI) turn that into structured, audit-ready data automatically.”

The approach is intended to prevent small suppliers being excluded from EU-facing supply chains as origin, deforestation, and labour-standard requirements tighten. The platform connects more than 6,200 suppliers and has processed over 95,000 invoices into compliance-ready records.

The platform combines a permissioned Hyperledger Fabric network, which holds supplier identities, contract terms, and production data, with batched anchoring on Cardano, packing up to 44 certificates into a single transaction. Data is captured through enterprise resource planning (ERP) integrations, document uploads, or a WhatsApp-based AI agent for suppliers without digital record-keeping systems – pilots have demonstrated that WhatsApp provides one of the most familiar digital interfaces for Brazilian exporters.

For Brazilian diversification

Pereira linked the system to Brazil’s shift toward non-US markets: “Diversifying away from the US only works if the new destination will actually accept the goods, and markets like the EU restrict entry based on proof of clean, traceable origin.” Despite 50% US tariffs on Brazilian goods, since narrowed by exemptions on key agricultural products, Brazil posted record exports in 2025 by redirecting volume to China and Asia, with exports to China, India, and the EU continuing to rise into 2026.

The EU-Mercosur agreement has been provisionally in force since May 2026, cutting tariffs on more than 90% of trade between the two blocs. Implementation is asymmetric: 82.7% of Brazilian exports enter the EU tariff-free immediately, against 15.1% of EU imports into Brazil, with the remainder phased in over time.

AZZAS 2154 uses the platform to trace its leather chain, cross-checking fiscal documents, supplier records and public databases into a single record per product. “Our goal is to trace 100% of the leather across our brands by 2030,” said Suelen Joner, head of sustainability at AZZAS 2154.

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Contracts signed to date cover 6.5 million certification records through 2030, with planned expansion into automotive, agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics.