Pacifical was established in 2011. It serves customers worldwide and specializes in promoting the sourcing and supply of sustainably caught, fully traceable, and verified tuna from the Pacific Ocean. Pacifical has evolved from a regional initiative of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement into a world leader in tuna traceability and verification. They are powered by continuous advancements in technology, particularly through their SmarTuna platform, which offers full transparency across the entire supply chain. In 2022, they reached a significant milestone by becoming the first seafood company to pass the GDST Capability Test, ensuring their traceability system aligns seamlessly with global seafood standards. SmarTuna enables real-time monitoring of sustainability and social standards compliance, positioning them as pioneers in the tuna industry.
What Makes Pacifical Unique?
Pacifical’s SmarTuna platform is the most advanced tuna-specific traceability and verification solution available. It not only tracks tuna from catch to consumer, but also independently verifies sustainability and labor compliance, ensuring brand’s promises are backed by real-time, verifiable data. Our platform provides robust proof-point reporting, ensuring compliance with regulations such as:
- No illegal, unreported, or unregulated (IUU) fishing
- No shark finning
- No illegal transshipment
- FAD-free confirmation
- Segregation at sea and at discharge.
- Meeting Regional Conditions Related to vulnerable species (dolphins, whales, sharks, whale sharks, turtles)
- Labor and social standards compliance
With SmarTuna’s 24/7 onboard observer monitoring and full digital traceability, we ensure that claims regarding sustainability and social responsibility are independently verified. SmarTuna integrates seamlessly with existing data handling systems, providing a real-time digital map of the entire supply chain.
Why GDST?
Pacifical became a proud partner of the GDST in 2021. Our motivation for joining stemmed from our commitment to revolutionizing traceability and transparency across the tuna supply chain. By integrating GDST’s tools into our SmarTuna platform, we can align the language of our system to seamlessly integrate with other solutions and continue providing our customers with robust, real-time verification of sustainability and ethical sourcing, ensuring the highest standards of accountability in the industry.
Why Digital Seafood Traceability Matters
Digital traceability is the backbone of our business. SmarTuna provides real-time proof-point reporting and verification at every step, ensuring that our customers can confidently make sustainability claims about their tuna products. By embracing digital traceability, we mitigate reputational risks, protect our partner brands against legal challenges, and fulfill the growing demand for verified sustainability and providing ultimate transparency.
How GDST helps to Address Challenges
The complexity of the seafood industry, especially tuna, poses challenges around data interoperability and standardization across multiple stakeholders. GDST helps overcome these barriers by establishing standardized data formats and communication protocols. SmarTuna, being GDST-capable, ensures data sharing across the entire supply chain, increasing transparency and helping us meet both regulatory and consumer demands for trustworthy, traceable seafood.
Impact of GDST on the Business
Pacifical SmarTuna platform is fully GDST-capable, which has significantly enhanced the interoperability of our supply chain. Now using the GDST standard, SmarTuna captures, verifies, and integrates traceability data across a diverse network of stakeholders, ensuring consistency, reliability, and real-time traceability from catch to consumer.
Long-Term Goals
Our long-term vision is to drive the widespread adoption of comprehensive digital traceability systems like SmarTuna throughout the seafood industry. Success means achieving universal GDST implementation, enabling seamless data exchange and verification across the supply chain, enhancing operational efficiency, and increasing consumer trust in the sustainability and ethical sourcing of tuna products. The broader the industry’s participation in these systems, the closer we get to a fully transparent, accountable seafood sector.
Advice for Potential GDST Partners
We recommend that businesses collaborate closely with industry stakeholders and adopt GDST standards for data formats and communication. Choosing a GDST-capable platform like SmarTuna ensures not only seamless traceability but also independent verification of sustainability claims, protecting against reputational and legal risks. Engage in rigorous proof-point reporting, especially in verifying compliance with labor standards and preventing IUU fishing and by catch of vulnerable species. By embracing traceability and verification, businesses can stay ahead of evolving regulations and consumer demands for sustainable, transparent seafood products.
You can learn more about Pacifical at: Pacifical Website
Explore the benefits of GDST partnership at: GDST Get Involved