Groupe Cat, one of Europe’s biggest finished vehicle services company, has signed up to the Vinturas consortium, which is developing a blockchain-based platform providing digital services to OEMs, fleet owners and dealers. 

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With the French group on board, Vinturas claims it now covers all key markets in Europe and its digital platform will manage more than 12m vehicle movements annually, which is more than 25% of all supply chain vehicle movements in the region.

Last year Groupe Cat shipped 8.9m new vehicles, including 30,000 industrial vehicles and trucks. It also prepared 1.7m vehicles.

Vinturas’ CEO Jon Kuiper: “With Groupe Cat now joining the consortium, Vinturas has become the leading digital platform in our industry. The digitalisation of the finished vehicle supply chain will finally give our customers, from OEM to dealer, the insights and value creation the industry has been waiting for.” 

For a sector still largely paper based, standardisation through digitalisation will result in significant process improvements and lead to more transparency for customers, according to Vinturas. Its platform provides end-to-end track and trace functionality for every new vehicle leaving the assembly plant on its way to the dealer.

Based in the Netherlands, Vinturas was set up earlier this year with founding members Axess Logistics (present across Scandinavia), Koopman Logistics (Netherlands and Germany), National Vehicle Distribution, NVD (Ireland and UK), and the Autolink Group (Baltics, Finland, Russia and the CIS).

The platform is currently being tested with major customers and is scheduled to go into production early next year.