Electronically tracing dairy goodness from farm to market

Trace the goodness

Gearing up to electronically trace dairy goodness from farm to market

Fonterra is on track to have total electronic traceability to world-class standards by 2020

From the raw milk source on-farm through every stage of manufacturing and every ingredient in every product sold in every market.

Already, all New Zealand and Australian-sourced products, representing 74 per cent of total global production, can be electronically traced through the supply chain from manufacturing sites to customers.

“We are now making it possible to electronically trace the goodness in every drop of milk our farmers produce and the products we make from it, so traceability will extend back to milk off farms” says Chief Operating Officer global consumer and foodservice, Jacqueline Chow.

“Through our Trusted Goodness™ quality seal we have made a promise to all the families who eat and drink our products and all the customers who use our products that they can trust us. To keep this promise we need to know exactly where our product is, what went into it and what it was used for.

“Today as more products cross borders and consumers put more and more store in value of good nutrition, there is a growing demand for information about what goes into our food and for reassurance that it is produced with a great deal of care. Traceability provides consumers with reassurance.”

Fonterra’s General Manager Trust in Source, Tim Kirk says Fonterra has always been able to trace products from day one, but through systems using a mix of electronic information as well as manual logs and spreadsheets.

“What we are aiming for now is world-class electronic product traceability, so if we have any concerns about any product we can electronically trace it anywhere in our supply chain within three hours. We are well advanced. By the end of this year 40% of our plants globally will have traceability data electronically connected, a further 50% of the plants will be included by the end of 2017, and the remaining 10% will be completed in 2018/2019.”

He says the versatility of milk and Fonterra’s scale as the world’s largest dairy processor and exporter has required a very broad scope for full electronic product traceability.

“Milk is amazing because of all its uses. You can drink it straight from the glass, turn it into familiar products like cheese, butter and milk powders, and also recover valuable products such as high protein whey or casein through manufacturing processes. Then, at another level, it has individual components like the iron-binding protein lactoferrin, or protein hydrolysates which are very valuable in paediatric and medical nutrition.

“Often, components extracted from milk during the making of one product will be added to milk being turned into another product. So as well as tracing finished products, our total product traceability has to cover all the various component products we produce and either sell or use.

In every drop

“When we talk about tracing the goodness in every drop, that includes each part of every drop, and where each of those parts go, either out to customers or into our own finished products. It’s a lot more complex than being able to trace the content of a can of baked beans, for example.”

He says that with Fonterra collecting more than 22 billion LME from 10,500 farmers and operating 34 sites in New Zealand alone, the scale of the job has been significant.

“In ingredients alone, we produce almost 1400 products and we have significant backroom manufacturing and supply chain process technology which is all part of this work.

Fonterra has adopted the best practice GS1 global traceability standard used by world-class supply chains. It defines a minimum set of traceability requirements within business processes to achieve full electronic supply chain traceability.

“This ensures we will have a robust system for total electronic product traceability starting with milk collected from farms and spanning the entire supply chain from the manufacturing and packaging of goods to their storage and dispatch to customers,” says Mr Kirk.

In addition to rolling out full electronic traceability, Fonterra is strengthening its systems to safeguard customers and consumers using product authentication, tamper-evident packaging and anti-counterfeiting technology.

“For example we use tamper-evident seals on packaging to all Anmum™ products in New Zealand and Indonesia, giving consumers a visible indication of product tampering that could occur post-packing. We are also rolling out QR codes for Anmum™ which consumers can read via a smart phone.”

The code, which is unique for every can or retail carton of the product connects consumers via a mobile phone app to a webpage with information which verifies the authenticity of the product and its batch number. It also uses light activated technology to code the product, making it harder to damage the code. The codes will be progressively introduced from next year.

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