‘Using food industry best-practice ensures that ingredient traceability from farm to bowl is fully maintained throughout the pet food processing operation. Going above and beyond food safety requirements is a great way future-proof the system’
Our customer is a multi-award winning raw pet food supplier based in the UK. They were named in the Global 100 Leading Innovators in Healthy Pet Feeds list in 2020 and are committed to animal health and happiness. As such, they believe in quality ingredients which meet strict traceability criteria; applying standards that would not be out of place in a food manufacturing operation.
Our customer sells direct to the public which has earnt them over 2000 positive Trust Pilot reviews. They also sell through a network of independent pet food retailers throughout the UK.
At the time we spoke, our customer was keen to improve their farm to bowl traceability system. They needed to ensure their process would meet, and exceed, the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA) and Food Standards Agency (FSA) requirements for pet food manufacture and labelling.
Our customer also believed that their current traceability system could be improved to reduce human error and cut down on downtime due to illegible barcodes. They turned to Piroto for advice on traceability as they knew we supplied many food manufacturers with customised traceability labels and tags.
Since the Piroto team has many years of experience in creating traceability labelling systems, we were happy to share our food industry knowledge with our customer.
Having discussed our customer’s exact labelling requirements, we recommended colour coded, chill and freeze resistant tags. The tags were overprinted with a barcode and QR code on-site as ingredients entered goods-in, and attached to each bin containing raw ingredients. The codes allow our customer to accurately maintain traceability throughout processing, and assist the pickers to select the correct ingredients for each variety of pet food mix.
We specified a traceability tag material and finish that would overprint well. The material selected ensures that barcodes and QR codes remain scannable even in cold and damp conditions typified by our customer’s operating environment.
The self-tie loop and lock tags can be easily attached to our customer’s ingredient bins and trays; they can also be removed quickly at the end of the process. Colour coding the tags means that operatives can identify the ingredients they need to make up a batch of pet food at a glance.
The whole process ensures full traceability is maintained from goods-in to packaging and despatch.
With food industry knowledge and years of experience in developing traceability labelling systems, the Piroto team was able to provide a simple and effective tagging system for our customer. Specific benefits to the customer include: