Strong partnership for transparent supply chains 

• osapiens becomes majority shareholder of GS1 subsidiary F-Trace 

The Mannheim-based software company osapiens will in future hold 80 percent of the traceability service F-Trace, previously a 100 percent GS1 Germany company. The aim of the partnership is to enable reliable transparency in supply chains for greater sustainability and trust by combining technology expertise, community and global standards. 

Partnership with one goal: more transparency in global supply chains 
Manufacturers and retailers are placing more and more demands on their supply chains, partly due to their need for responsibility and their “Proof your Claim” sustainability promise, and partly due to the increased demands of consumers and national and European legislation. With the merger of osapiens and the cloud-based traceability solution F-Trace, there will be a service on the market in future that meets these challenges. 

“The requirements and dynamics on the market are increasing significantly. At the same time, there is a growing need for trust in secure systems that support companies in their day-to-day handling of data. The merger enables us to respond precisely to these needs by combining the best of both systems in the osapiens HUB: with our technological development power and the process and industry knowledge of F-Trace”, said Alberto Zamora, CEO & Co-Founder of osapiens. 

Technology meets process and industry expertise 
For its software solutions that make supply chains transparent, predictable and trustworthy for companies and their products, osapiens uses technologies such as iPaaS, IoT and artificial intelligence to integrate, process and analyze large amounts of data. With its cloud-based technology platform, the osapiens HUB, the winner of the German Start-up Award 2022 enables its customers to achieve automated and simplified supply chain management that is compliant with the relevant legislation, such as the German Supply Chain Act (LkSG). The F-Trace solution is also dedicated to the central challenge of communicating information uniformly within supply networks. Based on the global standards of GS1 Germany, which is still involved, the community from industry and trade is enabled to transmit and retrieve data across companies and sectors in order to map trustworthy, transparent supply chains. 

“We continue to be driven by the community concept, which means that we develop solutions with and for the industries and not individual solutions – that is and remains our brand essence. Our focus is on a holistic approach to transparency and traceability for value creation networks, with a current focus on the food sector”, said Laura Echternacht, Managing Director, ftrace. 

Community solution for more trust and transparency 
An important component of the partnership will be the continued connection to GS1 Germany. The neutrality of the GS1 platform ensures that interests are equally weighted. In addition, direct feedback with the international standardization work for transparent supply networks is guaranteed in the systems for customers. 

“The partnership with osapiens is a great opportunity to give this topic, which currently poses major challenges for suppliers and retailers alike, a real technology push and process and industry knowledge. One thing is particularly important to us: trust and transparency go hand in hand, one is not possible without the other, especially when it comes to sensitive data in supply chains. GS1 Germany supports this with the neutrality of our platform”, said Thomas Fell, CEO, GS1 Germany. 

With the acquisition of the majority shareholding of 80 percent by osapiens, Thomas Fell is stepping down as CEO of F-Trace. He will be succeeded by Laura Echternacht, previously COO of F-Trace, and Jochen Morsbach, Chief Legal & People Officer at osapiens, as dual heads of the management board. As shareholders of F-Trace, Alberto Zamora for osapiens and Thomas Fell for GS1 Germany will represent the interests of the companies. 

ftrace GmbH 
The traceability solution ftrace improves efficiency and trust along the entire supply network by standardizing entire industries and enabling companies to exchange origin and transparency information with each other. ftrace is a cloud-based traceability solution that sets new standards. Consumers can find out exactly how a product was created – throughout the entire manufacturing and processing process. This creates trust that inspires consumers. Producers and retailers benefit in several ways: consumers trust their products more than others. ftrace is 80% owned by osapiens Holding GmbH and 20% by GS1 Germany GmbH. 
www.ftrace.com 

GS1 Germany  
In 1974, a barcode was scanned for the first time in a supermarket. This was the beginning of automated checkout – and the start of GS1’s success story. The machine-readable GS1 barcode with the included GTIN is now the universal standard in the global exchange of goods and is scanned six billion times a day on products. GS1 standards are the global language for efficient and secure business processes that are valid across company boundaries and continents. As part of a global network, we work with our customers and partners to develop market-driven and future-oriented solutions that directly contribute to their business success. Today, two million companies from over 20 industries worldwide use this language to uniquely identify products, locations and assets, to record relevant data and to share it with business partners in the value creation networks. GS1 – The Global Language of Business. 
www.gs1.de