Tx-Rails — Supermarket Pricing Sheet
The auditable underlay for Supermarkets — primary producers, processors, brand owners, 3PLs, retailers, regulators, ACCC / CMA / FTC investigators, and the shopper at the checkout. Cryptographic continuous audit + farm-to-shelf chain-of-custody + multi-party attestation, sitting underneath your existing POS, WMS, TMS, ERP, supplier-portal, recall-management, cold-chain-monitoring, and shopper-loyalty systems. We don’t replace any of them — we bind to them via a published integration mode and produce tamper-evident, jurisdiction-independent records of everything they emit. See supermarkets.md for the 54 federations covering producers + processors + retailers + governance.
What you get
Three integrated capabilities, one platform:
- Continuous cryptographic audit infrastructure
Every price-tag change, every promotional-discount calculation, every cold-chain reading, every batch-pallet handover, every ingredient-origin claim committed to a Byzantine-fault-tolerant ledger and Merkle-anchored to the Hedera public DLT. Continuous evidence stream replaces the documentary-trust model that struggles under ACCC misleading-discount investigations, modern-slavery disclosure scrutiny, food-recall response-time queries, free-range / MSC / organic-claim disputes, and Grocery Code of Conduct investigations.
Aligned with: ACCC misleading-discount-pricing enforcement; Modern Slavery Act 2018 (AU + UK); Food Standards Code (FSANZ); HACCP / GFSI / SQF / BRC / IFS food-safety standards; Country of Origin Labelling (CoOL) information standard; ASIC + ACNC reporting; Grocery Industry Code of Conduct + Food and Grocery Code (Senate Inquiry 2024 review); EU Farm-to-Fork strategy; UK Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA) jurisdiction. - Multi-counterparty supply-chain attestation with smart-contract-equivalents
Supplier-payment milestone settlement, automated promotional-funding reconciliation, real-time cold-chain compliance attestation, ESG/Scope-3 emissions evidence by default, Modern Slavery Act tier-3 attestation. Unlimited data capacity (database-backed, not on-chain). Your existing POS / WMS / TMS / supplier-portal systems feed events via change-data-capture or atomic dual-write; the underlay produces verifiable settlement and provenance without anyone changing their existing operational workflow. - Regulator, investigator & shopper-grade evidence pipeline
Live data access for ACCC / CMA / FTC investigators; FSANZ / FDA / DEFRA recall-response evidence; Modern Slavery Act statement-evidence-pack; GCA / Food and Grocery Code dispute-evidence; “scan-this-code” shopper-verifiable provenance for premium claims (free-range, organic, MSC, fair-trade, country-of-origin).
What we sell — and what we don’t
What we don’t sell at any price: full transaction-front-end replacement. We don’t build your POS, your WMS, your supplier-portal, your category-management tool, your shopper-loyalty app, your recall-management workflow. Your operational + shopper-facing screens stay put. If you need a new screen, your engineering team builds it against our published SDK with our reference connectors.
What we do sell falls into two groups:
A. Operator utilities (bundled — Items 2 + 4 in the pricing table)
- Evidence-retrieval portal — your compliance team pulls cryptographic proofs in response to ACCC, FSANZ, ACNC, GCA, plaintiff-class-action-lawyer, or shopper-rights-group questions. Generates evidence packs in formats acceptable to ACCC investigation requests, Modern Slavery Act review panels, recall-response audit, and Grocery Industry Code adjudication.
- Compliance-officer dashboard — live view of misleading-discount-pricing exposure, Modern Slavery Act tier-3 supplier-attestation status, cold-chain-conformance metrics, country-of-origin label-claim provenance, recall-response readiness, Grocery Code dispute status.
- Trust-management UI — operator-side controls for your enterprise PKI: certificate issuance for category managers / cold-chain operators / supplier-portal admins / tier-3-supplier auditors, revocation, partner-org onboarding (brand owners, 3PLs, primary producers), kill-switch.
B. Counterparty / supplier-network attestation UI (optional — Item 5 in the pricing table)
Thin signature surface for external counterparties — primary producers, brand-owner co-packers, 3PL cold-chain operators, ingredient-importers, tier-3 suppliers under Modern Slavery Act scrutiny, certifiers (MSC, organic, fair-trade). This is explicitly in scope for us to develop, distinct from the “no supplier-portal replacement” line above.
What it does:
– DID / certificate-based authentication
– Per-tenant queue of pending attestations (batch-handover signoffs, cold-chain compliance acknowledgements, country-of-origin attestations, certification-conformance signoffs, Modern Slavery Act tier-2/3 disclosure signoffs, promotional-funding reconciliation acknowledgements)
– Sign + submit with cryptographic proof landing in the BFT mesh
– Multi-tenant via entnum — each supplier sees only their own queue
What it explicitly is NOT:
– A supplier catalogue / sourcing / RFQ / contract-management replacement
– A supplier CRM
– A category-management or promotional-planning tool
When you’d buy this: your existing supplier-portal stack can’t carry M-of-N cryptographic co-signature, or your tier-2/3 supplier base operates without a portal at all (common for primary producers, small co-ops, and informal cold-chain operators in your supply tail).
Pricing — five line items, four budget homes (Item 5 optional)
| # | Item | Type | Indicative price (AUD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One-off integration & onboarding — integration-mode selection, wiring against your POS / WMS / TMS / ERP / supplier-portal / cold-chain-monitoring / recall-management systems, certificate-authority setup, UAT, launch | One-off CapEx — capitalisable over 3–5 years | A$160,000 – A$360,000 |
| 2 | One-off operator-UI configuration — evidence-retrieval portal skinned to your brand; regulator-export templates (ACCC misleading-discount evidence packs, Modern Slavery Act statement-evidence, FSANZ recall-response packs, GCA dispute-evidence); compliance-officer dashboard customised; SSO with your IdP | One-off CapEx — capitalisable over 3–5 years | A$80,000 – A$170,000 |
| 3 | Annual support & maintenance (security patches, OS/library upgrades, 24×7 help desk for cold-chain-adjacent + recall-response operations, 99.9% uptime SLA, integration-mode adjustments, operator-UI updates for new regulator templates) | OpEx — renewable annually | A$120,000 / year |
| 4 | Tx-Rails platform access — BFT infrastructure, audit attestation, Hedera anchoring, dual-DC redundancy, regulator pipeline. Includes the three operator utilities. Tiered by pyramid count — see range governance below. | OpEx — annual platform subscription, pyramid-tiered | A$140,000 – A$5,000,000 / year |
| 5 | Counterparty / supplier-network attestation UI (optional) — thin signature surface for primary producers, brand-owner co-packers, 3PL cold-chain operators, certifiers (MSC, organic, fair-trade), tier-3 suppliers under Modern Slavery Act scrutiny. NOT a supplier-management / category / promotional-planning replacement. | One-off CapEx — capitalisable over 3–5 years | A$100,000 – A$280,000 |
| Year 1 total (Tier-3 example: 3 pyramids, Items 1+2 mid-points, Item 5 excluded) | A$890,000 | ||
| Year 1 total with Item 5 mid-point | A$1,080,000 | ||
| Year 2+ ongoing (Tier-3 example) | A$470,000 / year |
Item 4 — pyramid-tier pricing:
| Tier | Customer profile | Pyramid count | Annual platform fee (Item 4) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 4 | Single-brand owner, single primary-producer co-op, single 3PL — Shape 3 single pyramid or pilot | 1 | A$140,000 |
| Tier 3 | Mid-tier brand owner with multiple categories, regional retail chain, ingredient-importer / brand-house — 2–3 pyramids (Shape 2 small cluster) | 2–3 | A$350,000 |
| Tier 2 | Tier-1 retailer in a smaller market (single-country chain), large brand house with global category portfolio, integrated cold-chain logistics primary — Shape 2 grouped (4–7 pyramids) | 4–7 | A$1,100,000 |
| Tier 1 | Tier-1 multi-country retailer (Coles, Woolworths, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Carrefour, Kroger), global brand-portfolio FMCG primary (Unilever, Nestlé, P&G), global 3PL — Shape 1 sovereign across multiple federations | 8+ | A$3,500,000+ |
Item 1 — what governs the range:
– A$160k floor — hash-only attestation (Mode A): your existing systems commit as normal; we receive only content hashes.
– A$360k ceiling — atomic dual-write (Mode B): your POS / ERP and Tx-Rails commit in the same transaction. Highest integrity guarantee; suits new build-outs of category systems or POS-platform refreshes.
– Most operators land mid-range with change-data-capture observation (Mode C) at ~A$230–300k.
Item 5 — what governs the range:
– A$100k floor — single-flow attestation (e.g. just country-of-origin co-sign for one category), single supplier role.
– A$280k ceiling — multi-flow hub (batch-handover + cold-chain compliance + CoO + certification-conformance + Modern Slavery Act tier-3 + promotional-funding reconciliation), multiple supplier role tiers, DID auth, deep brand alignment.
Payback and ROI
For a Tier-3 mid-tier retailer or brand-owner with ~A$1B annual revenue and ~A$300M in directly counterparty-touching flow (supplier payments + 3PL fees + promotional-funding reconciliation + recall-response administration).
| Annual benefit | Conservative | Realistic |
|---|---|---|
| Audit IT-controls displacement (external auditor + Modern Slavery Act assurance + ACCC document-production response) | A$150,000 | A$400,000 |
| Supplier-payment reconciliation & dispute overhead reduction (promotional-funding reconciliation, deduction disputes, slotting-fee accounting, 3PL invoice queries) | A$500,000 | A$1,500,000 |
| Reduced exposure to ACCC misleading-discount-pricing penalties, ASIC continuous-disclosure investigations, GCA dispute findings, class-action consumer-protection settlements | A$300,000 | A$3,000,000 |
| Recall-response cost reduction (faster batch isolation, less stock-write-off, lower reputational damage when recalls are surgical rather than category-wide) | A$200,000 | A$800,000 |
| Modern Slavery Act + Country-of-Origin + sustainability-claim compliance evidence (replacing manual tier-3 supplier-attestation administration) | A$150,000 | A$500,000 |
| Insurance-premium reduction tied to telemetry-backed risk evidence (product liability, recall coverage, cyber-supply-chain, cold-chain business-interruption) | A$150,000 | A$600,000 |
| Total annual value delivered | A$1,450,000 | A$6,800,000 |
| Tx-Rails Year 2+ cost (Tier-3 example) | A$470,000 | A$470,000 |
| Net annual return | A$980,000 | A$6,330,000 |
| ROI multiple | 3.1× | 14.5× |
Tier-1 retailers (Coles / Woolworths / Tesco scale) see materially larger absolute ROI because the regulator-penalty exposure floor is much higher — an A$26M ACCC penalty (in line with the 2023 supermarket-discount-pricing-case bracket) wholly funds a multi-year Tx-Rails Shape 1 sovereign deployment.
Pilot terms — non-binding, parallel-run, zero operational risk
- 3 months running Tx-Rails alongside your existing systems. No production switchover.
- Mode A (hash-only) integration with one chosen federation (typically
tx-rails-supermarket-cold-chain,tx-rails-supermarket-promotional-pricing, ortx-rails-supermarket-batch-recall) for the pilot. - Walk-away clause: if at month 3 the metrics don’t meet agreed targets, the engagement ends.
- Regulator pre-validation: before signing, we’ll meet with ACCC / FSANZ-equivalent + your external auditor’s retail practice to confirm evidence-pack acceptability.
- Data ownership: cryptographic exports are open-format, re-readable indefinitely.
Why now
- ACCC misleading-discount-pricing enforcement — record penalties against Australian majors in 2023–24; courts are no longer accepting “the system did it” defences.
- Senate Inquiry into Supermarket Prices (2024) + Food and Grocery Code review — Code becomes mandatory; GCA-style adjudication tightening.
- Modern Slavery Act 2018 (AU + UK) — Statement-level disclosures increasingly scrutinised; tier-3 supplier evidence-of-due-diligence expected.
- Country-of-Origin Labelling (CoOL) enforcement — false-claim civil penalties under ACL escalating.
- FSANZ + GFSI food-safety harmonisation — recall-response-time evidence demanded in commercial supply contracts as well as regulatory obligations.
- EU Farm-to-Fork + UK GCA jurisdiction expansion — sustainability-claim and supplier-treatment evidence requirements rising for any retailer serving multi-jurisdiction markets.
Next steps
- 30-minute discovery call with your CFO + Head of Compliance + General Counsel + Category Director.
- Letter of Intent — non-binding, signals pilot interest.
- Pilot kick-off within 8 weeks of LOI.
Contact: John Olsen · john@itotchaincloud.com.au · +61 490 114 879
Reference data sources: ACCC Annual Reports + Misleading-Discount-Pricing enforcement releases; FSANZ Recall Statistics; ACNC / Modern Slavery Statements Register aggregate data; UK Groceries Code Adjudicator Annual Reports; Senate Inquiry into Supermarket Prices submissions + report (2024); Food and Grocery Industry Code reviews; GFSI / SQF / BRC / IFS audit-cost benchmarks; CIES Food Business Forum studies; Cold Chain Federation logistics-cost data. Full citations available on request.
Tx-Rails — Built by IT/OT Chain & Cloud Australia (ITOTCCA). Sydney · London.