The Challenges

When it comes to satisfying compliance requirements, food and beverage organizations tend to encounter five main obstacles.

Supporting Product Recall Efforts

Product recalls happen. For many food and beverage growers and manufacturers, however, recalls are met with incomplete data records, making them impossible to quickly and accurately isolate and address. As a result, if a recall strikes, a manufacturer’s only recourse is often to recall every product that has been sold globally, even though the vast majority may be unaffected—costing millions or billions in lost product sales and detrimentally impacting brand perception. Yet, through the right combination of serialization and technology, proactive and rapid recall management becomes possible.

Providing Accurate Nutritional & Allergen Disclosures

When it comes to the highly-regulated food and beverage industry, accuracy is key. From caloric information, to nutritional content, to allergen disclosures, government agencies have mandated a wide range of rules and regulations surrounding consumer transparency. At the same time, the industry itself has devised its own set of best practices that are not government mandated, but are widely expected by end consumers. In order to upkeep these standards, organizations require robust labeling capabilities that correspond with highly-accurate digital records.

Legitimizing Claims without a Doubt

Along with ingredient-level disclosures, organizations are similarly charged to prove products ascribe to standards for health or environmental claims. Ranging from non-GMO and organic to grass-fed and cage-free, these products appeal to engaged consumers that seek out food products that align with their beliefs—and are willing to pay a premium for them. In order to legitimize these claims and avoid the penalties, fees, and bad publicity associated with an inaccurate claim, growers and producers must track products down to the individual ingredient, with the capability to access records at a moment’s notice to prove compliance.

Upholding Compliance Standards

Government agencies like the FDA champion food security across the global supply chain. In order to empower these bodies to effectively fulfill their duties, the food and beverage industry is charged with meticulously documenting practices so they are prepared if regulatory agencies ever come knocking. Doing so comes down to more than a holistic approach to supply chain tracking. Rather, it relies on highly-detailed, highly-secure record keeping.

Managing Tax Liabilities

The food and beverage industry is subject to a myriad of tax liabilities and obligations based on the flow of regulated goods across various localities, states, countries, and continents. It is only by ensuring that the data records are accurately documented and upkept that manufacturers can automate and manage their tax liabilities without any additional operational burdens.

The Solution

For nearly a century, Ashton Potter has served compliance-driven businesses around the world. Today, we own the entire food and beverage supply chain security process—ranging from the tamper-proof label, to the product security technology, to the data management system—and leverage partnerships with our Gold Integration Partners to cost-effectively augment and extend existing enterprise systems and processes.

From Serialization to Authentication

At Ashton Potter, we support product-level authentication through the use of tamper-proof labels that assign unique, serialized identities to every item throughout the supply chain. Highly scalable to the billions of records, Ashton Potter empowers global food and beverage operations to trace items with confidence throughout every stage of harvesting, production, and distribution, and adhere secure labels when it most makes sense—whether in the field, the sorting facility, or the manufacturing plant.

Drawing upon years of experience in the security printing space, Ashton Potter leverages best-in-class printing techniques to balance needs for security and feasibility, empowering manufacturers to design the secure labels that best align with their processes and requirements.

Automating Compliance & Traceability

Ashton Potter pairs its serialized labels with ProLinc®, an advanced technology solution that automates product safety compliance at every stage of the food supply chain.

By tracing products through harvesting, production, and distribution, and documenting comprehensive product genealogies for each item, ProLinc empowers food and beverage companies with a compliance management system that seamlessly records efforts, all without interrupting stringent timetables .

By storing highly-detailed records in a secure, Blockchain-enabled database, ProLinc provides government agencies a single, reliable access point to view records and expedite regulatory investigations.

Integration Services & Process Optimization

As a proven partner with specialized knowledge of product safety compliance, Ashton Potter augments its technology and labeling solutions with a suite of services that streamline implementation, optimize operational processes, and accelerate time-to-ROI. Working with its network of skilled partners, Ashton Potter provides end-to-end regulatory compliance management, process design, on-site and remote training services, and technology integration.

Most importantly, ProLinc works seamlessly with existing enterprise resource planning systems, field and factory equipment, and business intelligence tools to contextualize product insights and make compliance an automated aspect of every operation.