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Food Packaging and Date Coding Practices

Posted by Cecilia Barcenas on Nov 30, 2020 10:15:00 AM
Cecilia Barcenas
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Food Packaging and Date Coding Practices

The food manufacturing industry is huge! And within the food manufacturing industry comes many elements that allow for the industry to work as smoothly and efficiently as possible. One of the elements that is greatly utilized and extremely important is packaging and date coding. As you can imagine, quality packaging and date coding is essential to the overall quality of the product. In addition, it is also greatly important for the relationship that the company has with the client. Because this is the case, there are certain restrictions, practices, and requirements that businesses in the food industry must follow throughout their production and packaging of the products being sold. For more on food packaging and date coding practices, continue reading the material provided below.

Make Sure All Information Is Accurate

When providing information on the packaging of food, it is extremely important that the information that you include on it is indeed correct. When dealing with food, you want to make sure that not only the ingredients that are on the food packaging are correct, but that the expiration dates and nutritional values are right too.

If this information is not accurate, it could be extremely harmful. If the wrong ingredients are listed on the food packaging, it could cause great harm for somebody who is allergic to the contents. It could also be harmful if the individual thought that the food was indeed good to eat but was actually spoiled or bad because it had expired. It is so very important to double and triple check to make sure that all the steps, processes, and practices you follow regarding the content being printed on the food packaging is accurate. It is the small errors that individuals overlook that ultimately cause the biggest problems and damages.

Regular Maintenance Required

The printing equipment in the production line is beyond essential for food packaging and date coding. Without it, this information wouldn’t be able to be displayed on the products. Ensuring that these are not only working correctly, but also that you maintain the devices and equipment regularly, is an essential practice.

If the equipment that produces the food packaging and date coding isn’t properly kept up with, it can be harmful to not only the equipment itself, but the food items. Issues occur when maintenance isn’t properly followed, and this could result in the equipment breaking or becoming faulty. You do not want this to be the case because it is extremely important that all the information being printed is done so at a high-quality level. You cannot achieve this if you don’t follow the practice of regular maintenance.

Attentive Employees

Since most of the production lines are automated, there isn’t much that the employees must do hands on. However, they need to be attentive and keep an eye out for potential issues that could occur. If an issue is occurring and continues to happen for a multitude of products, it causes the business to lose money due to errors in printing. Yet, if the workers catch the issue before or right as it occurs, less products will be ruined which means less money lost.

Nothing specific needs to be done by the employees, just ensuring that they are keeping an eye on the printing aspect of the production line is key!

Use Correct Terminology and Codes

Understanding the industry and knowing the ins and outs is a must. There are many regulations and restrictions that come with selling food products, including using the right terminology and codes that coincide with the products. Making sure that these are followed is an absolute must do! Actively following this practice will allow for you to not only portray all the correct information to the grocery stores selling your product, but also to the consumers who ultimately buy it. You don’t want to incorrectly print the wrong code or term on the product that identifies the product as something else. Your records will be wrong and the transporting and tracking of the product will become an issue.

Quality is Key

You don’t want to rush the printing of food packaging labels and date coding. The printing quality is extremely important and ensuring its quality is a must do when talking about practices for printing and date coding. If the images printed on the packaging are of poor quality, it could negatively portray the brand to consumers. And if the barcodes are poor quality or cannot be read, or even worse, scanned, it could be harmful to the inventory numbers and the product itself. Obviously, both things are not issues that you want to occur. To make sure that this is not the case, prioritizing all the different elements and practices that contribute to the overall quality of the product is extremely important.

These items above are some of the best practices to follow when focusing on how to successfully and efficiently package food and date code. When looking at food packaging and date coding practices, you not only need to educate yourself on the restrictions and requirements of the food industry, but also understand how to properly ensure printing and application are done properly. If you do not follow these practices, it could cause for the packaging and date coding to not work or function properly. Using the correct terms and codes, ensuring great quality, having attentive employees, providing regular maintenance to the equipment, and ensuring all information and data is correct will help you successfully package and code your food products!

If you need to upgrade or purchase printing equipment to properly print the package labels and date codes, you have come to the perfect place! Here at Sneed Coding Solutions, we #KeepCodingSimple by providing the best products and professional input. We have an array of options depending on what exactly you need, including industrial sized inkjet printers and handheld date code printers. Take a look at our website to better educate yourself on our products and contact us if you have any questions.

Food Packaging and Date Coding Practices

 

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