The global trade digitalization infrastructure TWIN, built on IOTA, has processed over 184,000 invoices in Kenya, completed a UK border data exchange pilot, and is in talks with Asian governments and enterprises for pilot projects. Jens Munch Lund-Nielsen, head of IOTA Foundation's Global Trade & Supply Chain division, disclosed these figures at the project's one-year milestone.
From Paper Piles to Digital: TWIN Shrinks Trade Doc Retrieval to 5 Minutes
A typical cross-border trade involves 30 stakeholders, 36 documents, and 240 paper copies, taking weeks to process. TWIN has cut document retrieval time from 6-7 hours to about 30 minutes, and for Kenyan flower exports to Europe, trade document access now takes under 5 minutes. Administrative workload fell 50-60%, with exporters saving roughly $400 per month on document handling.
Jens emphasized in the interview that TWIN is not another trade platform but an open, neutral digital public infrastructure. "Most previous digitalization efforts built permissioned platforms controlled by specific enterprises or interest groups, making other participants reluctant to join. TWIN provides a decentralized trust layer with no single party owning or controlling the system."
Why IOTA Under the Hood: Scalability, Zero Cost, Neutrality
IOTA was chosen as the base layer for its DAG architecture supporting high-throughput transactions, near-zero transaction costs, and independence from any single corporate entity. IOTA has operated in government and enterprise environments for over a decade, with a verifiable track record. TWIN uses TWIN ID to interface with national digital identity registries and the Global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI), adopting UN/CEFACT and WCO data models to ensure cross-jurisdictional interoperability.
Real Deployments: From Kenyan Flowers to British Poultry
On the ground, multiple trade scenarios are live. In Kenya, the TLIP project connects exporters, logistics providers, and government agencies, covering flowers, coffee, and tea exports. In the UK, TWIN participated in the "Ecosystem of Trust Trials" involving 2,000 shipments of refrigerated poultry from Poland to Britain — port health officials received data up to 20 hours earlier than standard processes. The UK's Digital Trade Testbed will also trial TWIN to exchange digitized international trade information between ports and border agencies. Other projects include RESULD for fruit and vegetable supply chain traceability, MISSION for port operations optimization, and Salus for critical mineral supply chain traceability, enabling financial institutions to issue trade finance.
Jens noted that the global trade finance gap stands at roughly $2.5 trillion. With digital infrastructure like TWIN, trusted data and verifiable processes could unlock capital access at scale. "The more participants that connect to TWIN, the greater the value the system creates for everyone," he said.