Suppliers in the meat, delicatessen, produce, cheese, fish and bakery industries are accustomed to using bar codes of one sort or another for their loose or pre-packed products. These suppliers will find that GS1 DataBar brings more accurate and expanded data on their goods, and furthermore, includes the “last mile” in the supply chain, unlike the PLU (Price Look-Up Codes) Restricted Circulation Numbers or Variable Measure Numbers they are most likely currently using.

GS1 DataBar is being implemented by suppliers for international retailers on loose produce. Retailers now scan loose produce versus key entering of price look up (PLU) codes, providing 100% accuracy and achieving shrink control by differentiating conventional versus organic for example.

Today in Fresh Foods there are more than 40 different systems across the globe for Fresh Product identification and no global application standards to identify variable measure products sold at the Point-Of-Sale (POS).

Pilots are taking place on fresh variable measure products using GS1 DataBar Expanded Stacked. These bar codes can encode additional information such as best-before-date, country of origin, lot number and weight.

Next: Feile Foods - an Irish GS1 DataBar Success Story