A new barcode standard for fish boxes and pallets, NS 9405:2012, has been established, replacing NS 9405:1998, the previous standard.
Per Dag Iversen from the Norwegian Seafood Federation (FHL) says that the old standard was not successful, however, the new standard seems to be a hit.
The new standard covers the requirements for labelling of distribution units and pallets in the trade of fish and fish products, and is an initiative undertaken by DB Schenker, the transportation and logistics sector of Deutsche Bahn (German Railways), and grocery chains.
Transporters handle goods from many producers and packers, and want to avoid manual mistakes, leading to delays, quality claims or wrong deliveries
Grocery chains have to, by Norwegian law, inform consumers about fishing date, harvest date, and other demands.
The whole value chain has participated in the preparation of the standard, including: Standard Norge; fish producers and packers; fish farmers; transporters; grocery chains and exporters; soft- and hardware suppliers; Norwegian Seafood Federation and –Association; and Innovation Norway.
The mandate for the working group was to:
- Create guidelines for the labelling of fish boxes and pallets in open text and in barcodes
- Describe the content of information, determined by Norwegian law and what was wanted by the industry
- Demonstrate concrete examples of model labels for boxes and pallets
In a pilot project, researchers have checked that the planed standard satisfies the demands in the value chain in practice. They have also studied a number of companies in Norway, and found the need for growing demand for competence and investments in soft- and hardware in the Norwegian industry.
Bar codes are already widely used, however, the challenge is that there are so many different systems and so much different equipment in use. These systems do not speak a common language, the information they give are often different and in many instances they give unusable or wrong information.
A project for implementation has been established under the leadership of FHL. Road shows will soon be arranged along the Norwegian coast along with the ‘Bar Code School’, to educate the whole industry, enabling them to take the new standard on board in 2013.
Customers and importers in the main markets for Norwegian fish will also be informed of the new standard.
CEN has been notified about the Norwegian initiative and Standard Norge (the owner of the new standard) will consider asking CEN or ISO to create an international barcode standard, based on NS 9405:2012.
