TRACEABILITY FROM FARM TO FORK AND FROM VINEYARD TO GLASS Most of our readers will be familiar with the EU’s Falsified Medicine Directive, which came into force in February 2019. It requires pharmaceutical companies to send serialization data from each individual item to a European Hub through the use of unique barcodes, and to place a tamper-proof seal on every pack. But what about other industries? Elisabeth Skoda takes a look at serialization and track and trace applications in the food and beverage industries powered by NFC tags and QR codes, for a range of products from wine to radishes.
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hat are the benefits of knowing exactly where a product is on its journey across the supply chain? The food industry faces increasing legislation requirements from authorities and increasing transparency and sustainability expectations from consumers, Christine C. Akselsen, CEO at Kezzler, points out. “By tracking an individual product’s unique journey through each step of the supply chain food brands can proactively use real data and insights to resolve issues related to product sustainability, production efficiency, regulatory compliance and risk. The use of unique, secure and traceable identities (UIDs) delivers vastly improved visibility into product value chains and allows brands to deliver an enhanced consumer engagement experience.” This end to end traceability allows identifying problems and their causes at any point along the supply chain and enables a targeted recall for the affected products. “This means that only the actual products affected need to be taken out of the supply chain, and communication can be targeted directly at those customers who have received products that have been compromised. End-to-end traceability solutions ensure that the link to the company is never broken.” In the wine industry, serialization can offer ‘wide and broad’ benefits, as Ayhan Uslu, area sales manager at KURZ TRUSTCONCEPT®, explains. “The wine industry has a complex, fragmented supply chain with diverse materials and ingredients, ranging from fertilizers to grape growers and cap and bottle manufacturers. The industry is also heavily regulated. Therefore a serialized system can help with compliance to rules and regulations. Combatting the grey market and knowing that each bottle of wine is exactly where it should be is important. Counterfeit protection also prevents risks to consumer health, for example due to methanol, and prevents a loss of revenue. €2.3 billion are projected to be lost in the EU wine and spirits market in 2020 alone. Last but not least, wine consumers are also keen to know what they are drinking and where their wine is coming from.” When serialization happens, a predetermined coding type is assigned to each item. This gives it a distinct identity that can be tracked and traced to its location
in the supply chain or where it had been during its life cycle. But what is the best way to get this information on each and every pack and keep track of it throughout the supply chain?
Wine bottles and NFC TRUSTCONCEPT®’s solution for the wine industry works based on a smart NFC label with a tamper loop, Matthias Kronawitter, marketing manager at KURZ TRUSTCONCEPT®, explains. “The NFC label with a tamper loop inside and a QR code on top is applied on the bottles. The QR code is linked to the NFC tag and allows for quicker readability of product information, such as what the product ingredients are, where it was produced and on what machine it is stored in our database. The bottles then get stacked into a box, so another label gets applied on that, and the same happens on the pallet, so you know what products are in the boxes. Product information is held in our cloud-based systems. After this you can track product Christine C. Akselsen
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