There’s more inside a product: certified raw materials, a safe and sustainable production process, effective logistic and distributions, timely recall management. Gathering these information allows the creation of an intelligent ecosystem where data become valuable informations.
(video: Antares Vision)

Thanks for the content:
Davide Antonioli, Nicola Franzelli, Paolo Gilberti, Fabio Marezza, Ferdinando Salaris

In a virtual meeting we talked about how the history of food products and their traceability can be written. We did it together with Davide Antonioli (Communication Department of Antares Vision), Nicola Franzelli (Strategic Account Manager of Antares Vision), Paolo Gilberti (Antares Vision and FT System Business Development Manager) and Fabio Marezza (Key Account Manager of FT System).

Trustsparency™, the concept starts from the origin of products and reaches the consumer

History of food products — **Today any product can be traced from the point of production. (photo: Antares Vision)**

Davide Antonioli explains that “food safety combined with traceability put information in common in a clear way. The concept of Trustsparency was born, which puts the consumer at the center starting from the origin of the raw materials. Trustsparency goes towards the consumer and increases trust in the purchased product, of which he can know its history from the origin. The traceability of the single product offers undeniable widespread advantages, to the production process, to commercial distribution and to the final consumer “.

Trustsparency™: The more we know, the more confident we feel
For industrial engagement, you can use the printed datamatrix or an RDIF tag or if I want to go directly to the end customer, I use the QR code. (photo: Antares Vision)
The structure of any supply chain is complex and involves many actors, explains Micaela Orizio (Marketing & Communications Director): “Regardless of the sector, we may be vulnerable to counterfeiting due to many factors such as manual inputs, no central database and little regulatory clarity.
Industry 4.0 is a digital transformation where you can leverage data and ensure process efficiency, quality improvement and understanding of new customer needs. The advantages of authentic products and transparency of the supply chain are constantly in demand ”.
Today, any product can be traced from the point of production. “The path needed to reach the end user is rapidly becoming as important as the product itself” – continues Micaela Orizio. “Transparency is not just a trend; is the deciding factor for a sustainable future. Being transparent presents long-term challenges and benefits. These advantages derive from the safety of the customers and their trust in your original, safe and reliable products ”.

History of food products: the production process goes beyond sales

If production data were once important and we focused on them until the moment of sale, today this limit is exceeded and interest goes beyond monitoring the production process.

Buying behaviors are of interest and the collection of this information is the basis of the work of the sales and marketing division. To do this, we use the product label. “Once upon a time the producer just did his part, tried to do everything right and stopped where distribution came into play. Today the producer lives off his own brand. Putting a defective product on sale, regardless of who made the mistake, is a damage to the brand for which it is necessary to increase attention and pursue direct contact with the end customer. Tracking deals with this and is becoming a tool for direct contact with the consumer ”.

When production is interested in the customer engagement

As we have already said, today the producer does not stop with distribution but is interested in much more. Davide Antonioli (Communication Department of Antares Vision) explains that “an important point to investigate is certainly customer engagement, going beyond the technological aspects related to the production and tracking of the asset. Customer engagement studies what involves the consumer, perhaps with particular products by analyzing his behavior and purchasing decisions. Our experience regards, for example, wine as other particular products that are consumed to live engaging sensory experiences “.

Nicola Franzelli. (photo: Antares Vision)
Nicola Franzelli (Strategic Account Manager of Antares Vision) divides this world “into two macro-classes, if we want to consider involvement at an industrial level or at the level of the end user. For industrial engagement, you can use the printed datamatrix or an RDIF tag or if I want to go directly to the end customer, I use the QR code, which we now find on many packages. Furthermore, with the serialized QR code we can now identify every single product. You can also use other technologies, continues Nicola Franzelli: “like an NFC tag, readable by mobile for which you do not need to frame with the camera as with the QR code but just have the antenna active on the mobile phone, bring the phone close and it opens the page with the various dedicated web contents, or a specific or standard landing page and so on “.

The technologies used for the customer engagement

The digitally printed QR code can be embossed on each single label: in-line, pre-printed offline; the costs are reasonable with serialized digital technologies, or an NFC TAG which, due to its cost, is currently dedicated to a market of high-end products. NFC is used in the fashion world even though this tag is also used by some high-end wine producers to interact with the end customer for the history of food products.

The spread of the QR code is widening and is increasingly seen on food boxes, oil and other products. Often it is a fixed QR code, so those bottles or food will always have that QR code regardless of which element is framed.

“We aim to identify the single bottle using a serialized QR code for each single bottle in order to interact directly with the end customer with the contents dedicated to the individual person, to receive and analyze the data when someone scans that specific code” continues Nicola Franzelli. “On what concerns the QR codes and NFC tags on the information that are entered for the consumer, we are met by the fact that GS1 has just released the update on the legislation for digital links, we have recently moved from version 1.0 to version 1.1: this update explains how the information must be formatted within the QR code or NFC in order to have an interoperable platform for the various players in the supply chain”.