New UK partnership brings TWIN digital trade solution live

DARLINGTON, UNITED KINGDOM, February 4, 2026 – The TWIN solution, built on IOTA technology, is scaling UK Government pilots to digitalise international trade through a new partnership between the IOTA Foundation and Teesside University, the leading UK research institution in the digitalisation of international trade. The IOTA Foundation and Teesside University are delivering the partnership and pilots with government trade authorities as part of the UK’s digital border transformation.

To support the development, four UK Government officials were also seconded to the IOTA Foundation for a 12-month period, starting in 2025. Working alongside industry, port authorities and border agencies, the secondees are leading pilots of multiple technology solutions.

The collaboration builds on the successful UK Government Border Trade Demonstrator (BTD) pilot projects, which were developed and delivered with industry partners in 2025. Through the Digital Trade Testbed, operated by Teesside University at Teesside International Airport, the partners are expanding these initiatives to deliver practical digitalisation of international trade solutions at scale for UK traders, in line with the ambitions set out in the UK Trade Strategy.

Unlocking earlier data to keep trade moving

The purpose of all of the initiatives is to make UK trade processes more effective and reduce costly errors and delays.

Currently, trade data and documentation are often received late in the movement of a consignment, leaving little time to identify or correct errors before goods arrive at ports. The process for resolving issues often requires manual and resource-intensive work, involving large volumes of emails and phone calls each day. As a result, goods are routinely held at the border while information is clarified or resubmitted.

The pilots showed that these delays are often avoidable. By digitalising trade processes using open-source technology, paperwork can be reduced or eliminated, errors identified earlier, and costs lowered – while maintaining data security and increasing transparency. 

One outcome demonstrated that critical supply-chain data could be shared with UK authorities up to 20 hours earlier than under existing processes; an improvement that has positive knock-on effects regarding the elimination of errors and saving costs. 

The UK Government’s Trade Strategy 2025 estimates that digitalising trade documentation could deliver up to £1.2 billion in annual savings for UK traders, reduce processing times by up to 75%, and significantly cut manual errors and compliance costs. A 2024 study by the London School of Economics further estimated that trade digitalisation could boost UK GDP by 1.3%, underscoring the economic potential of initiatives such as the TWIN-enabled trials.

Advancing the digitalisation of international trade through open innovation

The trials combine the UK Government’s open-source Information Sharing Network with the new digital supply-chain tool, developed by IOTA under the umbrella of the TWIN Foundation. 

The TWIN tool brings together public and private sector partners to enable trusted, permission-based sharing of supply-chain data across borders. The platform is built on IOTA’s distributed ledger technology and is designed to integrate with existing government systems.

“There is a clear need to radically improve how trade processes work today,” said Dominik Schiener, Co-founder and Chair of the IOTA Foundation. “The pilots we’ve delivered with the UK Government show how open, interoperable digital infrastructure can provide earlier access to high-quality data – giving border agencies the time and visibility they need to keep goods moving safely and efficiently.”

A key finding from the pilots was the improvement in both the timing and quality of data made available to border authorities. Currently, some advance information is provided, but it is often incomplete or too generic to support effective risk assessment. For example, a consignment of chicken may be declared simply as ‘meat’, with no detail on origin or type. Using TWIN, authorities can access more detailed, trusted information earlier in the supply chain, allowing errors to be identified and corrected before goods arrive at ports.

This reduces the likelihood of compliant goods being stopped unnecessarily and improves the flow of legitimate trade. It also enables authorities such as Port Health Authorities to allocate resources more effectively to identify and intercept illegitimate or non-compliant consignments.

Delivering digitalisation of international trade at scale

Through the partnership with Teesside University, the TWIN solution will now be deployed through the Digital Trade Testbed, which is located at Teesside Airport. It will support the exchange of digitalisation of international trade information with key border agencies at ports across the UK.

“The Digital Trade Testbed provides a unique environment to move from experimentation to practical delivery,” said Professor David Hughes, Associate Dean for Research and Innovation at Teesside University. “By bringing together government, industry and technology partners, we can test, refine and scale digital solutions that deliver tangible benefits for traders, authorities and the wider economy.”

The trials will remain open to additional industry, academic and government partners, reflecting the shared recognition that improving international trade processes depends on collaboration across the entire ecosystem.

Teesside University will provide the digital infrastructure and industry links to host the data-sharing initiatives, while TWIN will contribute technical expertise and continue to work closely with UK Government secondees and border agencies to support deployment.

How it works:

Further Information

• IOTA deploys the Trade Worldwide Information Network (TWIN) solution, an open standards-based technology infrastructure designed to enable secure, efficient, and trusted data exchange across global supply chains.

• In the Border Trade Demonstrator trials, IOTA partnered with freight forwarders to provide a link to the real-world actors in the supply chain. The freight forwarder is able to provide all consignment and journey information, including commercial documentation, in addition to border administration documents such as export and import declarations and certificates. 

• TWIN provides open-source application programming interfaces (APIs), a type of software that automates the real-time capture of this information, together with any supply chain events such as dispatch locations and times, temperature monitoring, port entry and exit etc.

• In addition to consolidating supply chain information and events, TWIN will enable key documents to be transformed into their equivalent Electronic Trade Document (ETD) formats. A commercial invoice, for example, may be digitally signed and stored on the IOTA distributed ledger to ensure its immutability - both features required to legally recognise ETDs.

• The Digital Trade Testbed, operated by Teesside University, is the UK’s first physical and digital environment to test new and emerging technologies, to improve global trade processes. The Testbed has been funded by £3.5m in Freeport Seed Capital. The facility will enable the testing and real-world deployment of trade facilitation technologies at Teesport and Teesside Airport. These include digital products such as TWIN, and also physical tools, including autonomous vehicles and geo-locating devices. Read more.