food Marketing - Technology 4/2023

Packaging
Turning Traceability into Marketing Gold
Digitalized traceability systems can turn a costly legal requirement into easy routines which give you
and your customers peace of mind – and an opportunity to increase margins by marketing your product
provenance, explains Mathew Simpson of CSB-System.
“The traceability of food … shall be
established at all stages of production,
processing and distribution” (
according to regulation EC 178/2002).
Statutory regulations such as this,
along with food industry standards
such as Codex Alimentarius, BRC
Global Standard for Food Safety and
individual retailer standards have
really driven the mass adoption and
implementation of traceability systems
for all stages of food production.
Whilst the requirement for traceability
is a good thing for consumer safety
and market transparency, it does
cause difficulties for manufacturers.
There is a direct administrative cost
to recording and managing all that
information - and it is often difficult to
achieve because recipe processing is
complex.
For example, ingredients such as
sugar and salt are present in most
recipes. A single 20kg bag of sugar
could therefore find its way into ten
batches of different finished products.
Furthermore, flexibility in production
is also reduced. Whereas previously,
substituting beet sugar for cane sugar
would have been a simple expedient
to cover a shortfall, now a written
derogation is required, or alternatives
have to be written into the specification
in advance.
Moreover, it is now not enough to
purchase sugar from any reputable
supplier; instead, suppliers must
be approved in advance and also
written into the specification, and it
is necessary to record from which
supplier the sugar came for every
batch.
Nevertheless, as the saying goes,
‘every challenge is an opportunity’.
Viewed in another way, ‘traceability’
is only a more technical word for
provenance – or ‘knowing-where-itcame-from’.
And for many consumers
and many products, provenance is an
important part of the buying decision.
In some famous cases, the provenance
of a product has been turned into
commercial gold. Champagne is
perhaps the most famous example,
but even potatoes (Jersey Royal) and
pasties (Cornish) have been granted
official legal protection by the EU
– which helps them to market their
unique traceability.
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food Marketing & Technology • August 2023