Can Blockchain Fly the Silver Fern? Exploring the Opportunity in New Zealand’s Primary Industries

Abstract

Blockchain is an emerging technology perceived as ground-breaking. Yet, technology service providers are not realising the untapped market potential as quick as it was predicted. New Zealand is not any different. Currently, the number of blockchain-based solutions available in the country is rather limited. A clear understanding of the market of blockchain is critical for service providers to recognise the opportunities and the challenges. It has been suggested that multiple industries could utilise blockchain technology to attain numerous benefits. The primary industries of New Zealand will be one of them that remains underexplored. Therefore, in this study, we use total addressable market (TAM), a technique to estimate the market size, to explore the available economic opportunity of blockchain-based solutions in New Zealand’s primary industries. Our estimation suggests that it may be close to NZ$1.65 billion per year, including self-employed enterprises; or NZ$496 million per year, excluding self-employed enterprises. Besides, our review of secondary sources indicates that blockchain technology could tackle some of the challenges the primary industries are facing like food fraud and foodborne illness. However, lack of strong and practical use cases, lack of streamlined practice for data management, lack of understanding of the technology and its implication to business, and lack of regulation and legislation are the major impediments to blockchain adoption.