ADELAIDE: Beston Global Food Company Limited has executed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between its wholly owned subsidiary Beston Technologies Pty Ltd (BT) and Digimarc Corporation, to enable seamless e-commerce traceability, product authentication and anti-counterfeiting software-as -a-service (SaaS), thus creating a genuine “Food Trust” for consumers.

Digimarc, a NASDAQ listed company, is a leading digital technology company, based in Beaverton, Oregon, USA. Digimarc is a pioneer in the automatic identification of media, including packaging, other commercial print, digital images, audio and video.

The intention of the MOU is to bring together the relative strength of Beston Technologies and Digimarc with the goal of integrating Digimarc automatic identification platform into Beston’s OZIRIS platform and related technologies.

Beston Technologies has developed a technology “ecosystem” which comprises two separate technology products, BRANDLOK and OZIRIS. The technologies were developed to eliminate the risk of BFC’s products being counterfeited and to empower consumers with the ability to obtain information on the source, quality and integrity of the ingredients in the food and beverage products they buy from BFC.

Beston Technologies holds 11 International Patents or Patents Pending on its technologies and recently achieved successful full registration of its “provenance blockchain” patent by IP Australia (which last year achieved full US Patent Office registration). The patented technologies developed by Beston Technologies have been successfully deployed in the key dairy food segments of the BFC business.

Digimarc is the inventor of a revolutionary platform that enables a more efficient, reliable and economical means of automatic identification. The Digimarc Platform can apply a unique identifier to virtually all media objects (i.e. objects containing content which can be represented in virtual form, including product packaging, commercial print, audio and video) that can be automatically identified by an enabled ecosystem of industrial scanners, smart phones and other devices and applications. The Platform provides innovative and comprehensive automatic identification software and services to simplify data capture and

transform identification, association and authenticating workflows through unparalleled accuracy, speed and efficiency. The Digimarc Platform enables applications that benefit retailers and consumer brands, national and state government agencies, media and entertainment industries, and others.

The integration of the Beston Technologies OZIRIS Platform with the Digimarc Platform will be achieved with the assistance of software engineers and hardware specialists at the University of Adelaide and the University of Technology Sydney with a view to expediting the commercialisation of the resultant solution.

Project assistance is being provided through the Innovation Connections grant, forming part of the Federal Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources Entrepreneurs Program. BFC and Digimarc are confident that the integration of both Companies’ technologies will deliver new streamlined, innovative solutions to supply chain customers and lead to a commercial agreement between BFC and Digimarc for the provision of these solutions in Australia and around the world.

The Chairman of BFC, Dr Roger Sexton said that the key elements of the Beston Technologies and Digimarc platforms were a good strategic fit and the MOU will bring synergistic benefits that are mutually beneficial and advance the objectives of both companies.

“The partnership arrangement resulting from the MOU between Beston Technologies and Digimarc will enable the two parties to work together to integrate their respective technologies to deliver leading edge solutions to customers and consumers for traceability, product authentication and anti-counterfeiting. The SaaS solutions intended to be provided from the merged technologies of Beston Technologies and Digimarc will offer greater protection to vulnerable growers, manufacturers, retailers and customers than are generally available through other competitive systems,” he said.