Nornickel joins blockchain network for responsible minerals sourcing

Nornickel, the world’s largest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel and major producer of platinum and copper, announced that it is joining the Responsible Sourcing Blockchain Network (RSBN).

RSBN is an industry collaboration among members across the minerals supply chain using blockchain technology to support responsible sourcing and production practices from mine to market.

The move comes after Nornickel announced a strategy to use sophisticated digital technologies to create a customer-centric supply chain, which would include metal-backed tokens on the global Atomyze platform, a tokenization platform that represents physical assets in digital form.

Both the Atomyze and RSBN platforms were developed by leveraging Hyperledger technology, with IBM’s participation.

With Nornickel joining the RSBN, a series of its supply chains will be audited annually against key responsible sourcing requirements by RCS Global. The audits cover each stage of the company’s vertically integrated operations from Russian mines to refineries in Finland and Russia.

Once audited against responsible sourcing requirements, each supply chain will be brought on to the RSBN and an immutable audit data trail will be captured on the platform, proving responsible nickel and cobalt production, its maintenance and its ethical provenance, Nornickel said.

Built on IBM Blockchain technology and powered by the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric, the RSBN platform helps improve transparency in the mineral supply chain by providing a secure and immutable record that can be shared with specified members of the network.

RSBN is designed to be adopted across industries by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in automotive, electronics, aerospace and defense, as well as their supply chain partners in mining and battery manufacturing.