Orobo & IOTA: Trusted Product Data for Trade

TL;DR:
Orobo provides compliance-grade infrastructure for issuing and verifying Digital Product Passports across borders. Built on IOTA, it creates a shared, auditable layer of trust, helping manufacturers meet evolving international regulations while ensuring product data is transparent, verifiable, and ready for global trade.

A battery cell manufactured in China. Assembled into a module in Singapore. Installed in an electric bus in the Netherlands. Recycled at end-of-life by a specialist facility back in Europe. Four different actors. Three continents. One product.  And, until recently, no reliable way to verify the data connecting them.

That is the challenge Digital Product Passports are designed to solve. A DPP is a verifiable digital record attached to a physical product, capturing important data about its materials, origin, environmental impact, and lifecycle – data that plays a vital role in tracing the various parts that go into the product, as well as its journey from production to recycling and how its parts are extracted and reused. It’s not a label or a PDF, easily misplaced, tampered with, or lost along the way: it’s a machine-readable record that can be independently checked by anybody with the right authorization in the supply chain.

The shift toward DPPs is being driven by regulation on two fronts. In Europe, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), Battery Regulation and Construction Product Regulation require product lifecycle data across priority sectors, starting with batteries. In China, a national DPP roadmap for the textile industry announced in April 2025 is shaping up in alignment with international requirements, including ESPR. These regulatory developments underline that transparency is no longer voluntary. For any manufacturer that wants to access major global markets, verified product data is becoming a condition of trade.

Voluntary transparency won’t cut it: we’re talking mandatory, verifiable product data. Orobo, a Singapore-based clearing house for sustainability data, is using IOTA to deliver compliant infrastructure for issuing and verifying DPPs across borders.

Orobo: From Traceability to Compliance Infrastructure 

Orobo began as a traceability-focused solution before evolving into a compliance-focused DPP platform aligned with emerging global regulations. It focuses on high-compliance, high-volume use cases where auditability and interoperability across multiple actors and jurisdictions are non-negotiable.

The platform enables manufacturers to issue and manage Digital Product Passports across their supply chains, with a focus on industries where regulatory requirements are most immediate: batteries, textiles, and construction materials. Development has been accelerated through participation in IOTA’s Business Innovation Program, supporting technical iteration, and real-world deployment over the past year.

Proof: DPPs in Real-World Use

Orobo's platform is already deployed across several industries and geographies, precisely the kind of cross-border, multi-actor use cases that emerging DPP regulation targets.

• Battery passports for electric buses, spanning a supply chain from Chinese OEM manufacturer to Singapore HQ coordination to European market deployment and recycling via a public transport operator in the Netherlands.
• ReUse Properties: Digital passports for steel frame construction materials in the Netherlands.
• Moovwave: DPPs supporting consumer transparency and a product take-back system for sustainably made wooden sunglasses
• Metafarms: Cacao bean traceability linking farm-level production to downstream distribution, supporting export readiness

These cases share a common thread: the need to attach verifiable, structured data to physical products moving across complicated value chains.

Why Neutrality Matters

In any system built on third-party verification, the independence of the infrastructure provider is a prerequisite. Orobo participates in European Commission working groups on DPP standards and serves as a knowledge partner for intergovernmental committees on Digital Product Passports in Asia. This high-level positioning marks out Orobo’s neutrality: it doesn’t own or control product data, but provides the infrastructure through which all participants can independently verify it. 

In a fragmented global landscape, where manufacturers, regulators, and downstream partners operate across different jurisdictions and with different interests, that independence ensures that no single actor can unilaterally control or alter product records. Trust in the system depends on it.

How it Works

Orobo uses the IOTA public blockchain infrastructure as the verification layer underpinning its DPP platform. A hash is anchored on the IOTA ledger, making it tamper-proof and independently verifiable by any authorized party, without requiring pre-existing trust relationships between participants. 

This is especially important in cross-border supply chains, where manufacturers, recyclers, customs authorities, and regulators may have no prior commercial relationship but still need to rely on shared product data.

What’s Next for Orobo and DPPs

Orobo is positioned as infrastructure for manufactured goods that must meet regulatory requirements to access international markets, where DPPs are an integrated part of trade and supply chain operations. In the near term, this means deepening its presence in batteries and textiles, the sectors facing the most immediate regulatory pressure in both Europe and China. On the European side, Orobo is aligning with upcoming certification and registry initiatives that will define the standards for authorised DPP providers.

According to Sann Carrière, Founder at Orobo, “Digital Product Passports will become a foundational layer of global trade. At Orobo, we are building the infrastructure that allows product data to move as seamlessly and reliably as goods themselves — across borders, across systems, and across entire value chains. The shift is not just toward transparency, but toward verifiable, interoperable data as a condition for market access.”

Looking Ahead

Today, most DPP implementations operate in relative isolation: a passport issued by one platform, readable by a limited set of actors, contained within a specific commercial relationship. As global trade adoption scales and regulatory requirements expand, this siloed model will come under pressure. A compelling long-term direction is one where product data is captured and exchanged across interconnected ecosystems: multiple actors contributing information at different stages of a product's lifecycle, with improved discovery and interoperability between platforms. 

Solutions such as TWIN point toward this kind of shared infrastructure: decentralized data environments where a product's digital record evolves across its lifecycle, and where that data can potentially support additional services such as incentive mechanisms for recyclers or new models for cross-border coordination. 

As regulatory requirements continue to expand globally, the ability to issue, verify, and exchange trusted product data will become a foundational capability for international trade, and the infrastructure that enables it – like Orobo – will sit at the centre of that shift.

For more information, or to get started with your first DPP, please contact Team Orobo at [email protected]