Representatives of a European working group dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards for the supply chain met at the headquarters of SanLucar in Valencia to discuss strategies to harmonise data and information exchange to make the fruit and vegetable industry more competitive.
As well as being a member of the GS1 initiative, SanLucar is one of the few companies in the industry that has an internal department working on data standardisation.
During the two-day meeting, the participants discussed the importance of a printed guide explaining how to label fruit and vegetables, as well as and how to communicate among partners correctly using consistent standards.
In international business, communication problems and clashes with legal regulations in different countries can occur repeatedly.
Even indications of origin can pose difficulties: for example when DE, rather than Deutschland or Germany, is the only recognised ISO code on a fruit label.
“SanLucar started to work on standardisation three years ago,” said Christoph Waltert, the company’s commercial planning director.
“Since then, there have been significantly fewer errors in orders, deliveries or invoicing - and we save so much money. The standardization of data is paying off.”
Valencia-based SanLucar employs more than 2,500 people at its subsidiaries in Germany, Austria, Spain, Tunisia, South Africa, Ecuador and Benelux.
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