Food shipping simply wouldn’t exist without labels and signs. In order to maintain a baseline level of safety and quality, food shipping boxes and labels must be clearly legible.

Consciously mislabelling is considered a serious food crime, with consumers still very aware of major mislabelling and fraud scandals such as the 2013 horse meat fiasco, where horse meat was found in products advertised, shipped and labelled as beef.

Food shipping, then, has a delicate reputation, but it is safeguarded by stringent food shipping guidelines and labels.

The Law on Food Shipping

When food is shipped or sent via mail order in the UK, it must satisfy guidelines set by The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. The law requires shipped food and traders to convey certain information, including:

• A description of the goods or service.
• The total price and/or how the price will be calculated.
• How the consumer will pay for the goods.
• Delivery charges and other cost details, such as who pays for the cost of returning items if you have a right to cancel and change your mind.
• Details on the consumer’s cancellation right, meaning the trader needs to show a standard cancellation form to streamline the process.
• Geographical and contact information about the seller.

Bundled in with this law is the standard labelling procedures detailed below, which Label Source’s stock satisfies.

The Food Shipping Regulations

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs states that a food label should have the following qualities:

• Name of the food
• Ingredients
• Note presence of ingredients that trigger allergies or intolerances that are stated in the 14 allergens
• Quantity and categories of certain ingredients
• Net quantity of foodstuffs
• The ‘use by’ date
• Storage conditions and/or conditions of use
• Name of food business operator
• Country of origin or place of provenance
• Instructions for use
• The alcohol strength by volume for beverages containing more than 1.2 % of alcohol, by volume
• Nutritional declaration

These features are easy to glance over for many people, but if any are missing, it poses a serious threat to consumers, as well as causing confusion for storage conditions when shipping.

The above is a baseline, with certain foods needing additions to their labelling, including foodstuffs that contain certain gases, sweeteners, glycyrrhizic acid or its ammonium salt, high caffeine, phytosterols and/or frozen fish and meat.

The Role of Quality Assurance Tapes

Quality assurance tapes play an important role in guaranteeing food hygiene and safety too, especially when large amounts are transported at a time.

Quality assurance tapes can safely secure packaging whilst communicating key information, including inspection dates, return to sender, and QA seals. We recently wrote about the role quality assurance tapes play in all industries here.

What Happens When Labels Aren’t Adhered To?

Aside from the well-documented case of the 2013 horse meat scandal, several other food-related incidents have come about from cutting corners with food shipping labels.

A scandal from the same year, in fact, went under the radar despite being much more dangerous than a case of mistaken red meat identity. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) discovered that certain products were using nuts as substitutes for cumin without declaring that the products contained them. Luckily, nobody was harmed, but even someone with a slight nut allergy would know the danger of putting nuts in a product without declaring their existence.

Late in 2016, too, a 15-year-old girl died on a flight to Nice after highstreet chain Pret a Manger failed to label one of its products – a baguette - as containing nut allergens. A regulation that stopped the need for products made on site prevented the Heathrow-based store from labelling it correctly, resulting in the worst consequences possible.

In perhaps the most stomach-churning case of food crime in history, a lack of proper labelling and shipping standards led to a Chinese supplier attempting to sell 40-year-old meat to restaurants, most of which was obviously rotting. How meat stayed in a freezer for 40 years is a puzzle, but it’s a thought not worth dwelling on for long.

Label Source has stocked the best in quality assurance tapes and food shipping. For more from the ever-changing world of labels, be sure to follow Label Source on Facebook and Twitter.

Quality control is not an optional add-on or an afterthought. Establishing a programme that ensures quality can help businesses increase customer satisfaction, quality of product and savings. Quality management, control and assurance, though, all begin with proper control and recording of stock. This is where calibration and quality control tags come in, they allow businesses to organise and catalogue their products while also recording and guaranteeing quality.

The Importance of Calibration

Calibration is a catch-all term that refers to labels and the systems that can be used in measurement, testing, assessment, inspection and certification. Commonly, products need to be calibrated in order to meet international standards of safety and quality, as well as ensuring users and customers can trust the product. Why, then, do we need to use calibration tags?

Even though calibration tags are probably the easiest part of calibration, generally, without them, the process would be rendered useless. If a label is wrong, ineligible or missing, then there is no way to guarantee the safety or quality of the product. Calibration tags concisely illustrate a product’s key calibration information, including:

• Expiration and due dates
• Key features
• D. number
• In some cases, barcodes and signatures

In addition to being able to convey this information, calibration tags are tough enough to survive handling, environmental fluctuations and higher temperatures to ensure the information remains readable. Calibration tags are needed to build trust with a consumer base, safeguarding future sales.

Quality Control Tags

Quality control tags differ slightly from calibration tags as they are used more to identify areas for inspection and calibration as opposed to solely calibrating them. These tags can also be used to segregate batches or consignments of goods. By batching these products together, businesses can signpost products for inspection, quarantine, rejection, rework, repair, bonding and those that are a work in progress.

These tags help businesses organise stock, this ensures customers receive good quality products, as well as streamlining the business to cut down on confusion, shipping times and raising the efficiency of operations. All these bonus efficiencies lead to a business that is and comes across as professional and organised, leading to better sales both short and long-term.

The Role of UKAS

For the United Kingdom, calibration and quality control needs to pass through the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS), which is the sole national accreditation body in the country. As a government-recognised entity, UKAS is a not-for-profit company that assesses UK calibration and quality control standards against international standards.

UKAS is licenced by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy to use and apply national accreditation symbols which, essentially, mean the government recognises that a product is calibrated and accredited.

Businesses must then ensure their calibration procedures satisfy UKAS standards and meet accreditation. Its stringent evaluation procedure means suppliers and customers can trust that a product has been properly tested, inspected and calibrated without the need for background checks or cross-referencing.

Label Source has stocked the best in calibration labels and quality control tags for a variety of uses. For more from the ever-changing world of labels, be sure to follow Label Source on Facebook and Twitter.

Safety signs are present in our everyday lives to the point that it can become easy to forget about their slow yet important developments. While the overall design of safety signs remains largely similar, the industry is receptive to technological changes, especially as the wider world modernises. Below, we list how technology is changing safety signs and their meanings, as well as reflecting on where the wider industry can go from here.

Grounded Road Signs

Staring at your phone may offer some form of escapism when walking around, but its distracting nature can lead to some nasty roadside accidents. Accidents including pedestrians have increased in recent years, leading to industry experts calling for specialised road signs and warnings for phone-addled people. Shaun Helman works for a company that advises the Department for Transport, he is a big advocate for specialist road signs. Suggested measures include adding traffic light colours to pavements, indicating when pedestrians should stop and cross safely, as well as creating signposted “text-walking lanes”. While it’s probably easier just to pay attention to the road ahead, safety signs must adapt to modern risks.

LED Signs

In the future, it’s looking like painted-on and floor signs will be LED-based. Instead of using regular traditional signs, roads and factory lanes may employ a responsive system of LEDs. An example of this is the Starling crossing, which is in the prototype stage by London-based design firm, Umbrellium. Instead of having signs and walkways painted on the road, the system monitors traffic to activate LEDs and change signs according to traffic volume.

For example, the technology is currently being designed for a zebra crossing. The zebra crossing will activate when a pedestrian is waiting, the width of the crossing will change according to the number of people waiting:

https://vimeo.com/238188855

By combining machine learning with adaptive technology, these LED signs may be the first step in creating bespoke signs suited to individuals, businesses and traffic management.  

Projected Safety Lines and Signs

Similar to LED signs, projected safety signs are predicted to save businesses a significant amount in repainting and putting up safety signs. Currently, a lot of money is spent on factory floors and other related industries on repainting safety lines. Whilst cutting down costs, the process also reduces business downtime.

This technology will be relatively cheap in the future, too, as businesses will only need a projector and gobo outlines to project safety signs, warning signs and health and safety signs with little to no maintenance.

Future Signs

With the rate of new technology progressing, there will come a time where safety signs need to be created to control modern risk. Modern inventions that will likely be part of HSE’s range of signs include:

• Drone warnings
• Automation/Robot warnings
• Driverless Cars and Forklift Lanes

While these technologies are often seen as the future, people often forget that appropriate health and safety protocols need to be in place before they’re embedded into the mainstream working culture. The above are certainly exciting innovations for the future workplace, but they need to be controlled with appropriate signs and training first.

It pays to stay ahead of the curve with workplace signs and their meanings, so Label Source has stocked the best in safety signs for a variety of uses. For more from the ever-changing world of labels, be sure to follow Label Source on Facebook and Twitter.

In the UK alone, only one in three of us has received all of their package deliveries as planned, per year. Increasingly, the ever-expanding shipping industry is leaving shoppers in the cold, with packages becoming damaged, stolen or tampered with before delivery is completed.

The first line of defence for packages against this rising problem is tamper evident tape; which leaves behind clear evidence if someone should interfere with the packaged good. When we decide to leave packages on our doorstep or in our safe spaces, tamper evident protocol preserves this barrier of trust between courier and customer.

This incredibly useful tape, though, is not used in shipping alone. Its unique features and capabilities have resulted in the tape lending itself well to a number of industries. Below, we list what tamper evident tape is, as well as its importance in our economy.

What is Tamper Evident Tape and How Does it Work?

Funnily enough, tamper evident technology isn’t new. Letters - ever since ancient times - were sealed with wax and pressed with the sender’s signet ring to prevent information from being leaked. If that envelope was opened before reaching its destination, there would be tangible evidence of interference and a solid paper trail of blame. In modern times, however, we’ve gotten a bit more nuanced with postage.

As explained, tamper evident tape works by leaving behind clear evidence when a package has been opened. As soon as the tape is pulled away from the package, the tape leaves behind the words “VOID OPENED”. More often than not, this initial deterrent will prevent people from interacting with packages they shouldn’t. It also makes it obvious for businesses to keep track of packaged goods on site, especially those with sensitive materials and products, such as the medical industry.

Tamper evident tape works by leaving behind a relatively aggressive form of adhesive.  When the tape is peeled, the adhesive residue left behind spells out the aforementioned words. These tapes contain a type of adhesive known as “sensitive transfer adhesive”. Typically, quality in these products equates to how well it’ll work on tougher, less common packages.

Uses for Tamper Evident Technology

Tamper evident tape is used in a number of industries and disciplines, including:

• Food delivery: Following a series of PR-related disasters from food couriers being caught stealing food, some food delivery companies are now opting to add tamper evident tape to their package options.
• Jar food packaging: Tamper evident plastic is often found around jars to guarantee the good’s sanitary condition.
• Tamper evident bags: Used for transferring bagged contents that require authorised access. Commonly, these are used to transfer money between locations.
• Pharmaceutical packaging: Tamper-evident labels are essential to maintaining the safety and security of medicine and pharmaceuticals.
• Shipping: As mentioned previously, the shipping industry relies heavily on tamper-evident packaging to provide a layer of trust and security.
• Other tamper products: Tamper evident products can be used for unique purposes such as seals on caravan doors, tape to stop unauthorised entry, tape for warranty purposes, as well as security seals, which Label Source stocks.

It pays to have good tamper evident tape that works, so Label Source has stocked the best in tamper evident tape for a variety of uses. For more from the ever-changing world of labels, be sure to follow Label Source on Facebook and Twitter.

Everywhere you go, barcodes are there. From shopping to shipping, to transport, to our finances, our stock and information are constantly processed and recorded through an array of simple, parallel lines. Barcodes now carry with them an unprecedented level of trust, but they only entered the popular consciousness in 1974. How, then, did people conduct business and shop safely before the barcode?

The Beginning of the Barcode: Punch Cards

Before the bar code, shops and businesses needed to count stock manually, with issues such as shoplifting being much more common than modern levels. Without barcodes and their associated security systems, there was a total lack of deterrence as shoplifters couldn’t be caught as easily. After the wilderness years of pre-1890, where shopkeepers had to rely on stock counts and perceptive eyes, a punch card system was slowly adopted. These punch cards could only be used for simple arithmetic though. So, by the rise of the supermarkets in the 1920s, they were found to be old-fashioned and obsolete.

The Creation Phase: An Academic Study

Bar codes were, initially, dreams found in the realm of academic discussion and entrepreneurial spirit. The earliest record can be traced back to the 1930s by Wallace Flint, whose Harvard thesis envisioned an “automated grocery system” using punch cards and flow racks.

Essentially, Flint’s vision of the retail future was where customers would go to a store, mark their selections on a punch card, and insert these cards into a card reader which would then activate flow racks to bring customers their desired product.

The system doesn’t sound too dissimilar to modern self-service checkouts and stores like Argos, so maybe Flint was onto something. The idea, though, went nowhere due to cost, but it did get people thinking.

A decade or so later in 1948, a pair of graduate students at Drexler University embarked on their first steps to creating the first barcode. After overhearing a colleague turn down a proposal from a food-chain president to invent a machine to capture product information accurately, the pair – named Bernard Silver and Joseph Woodland – began working on a retail system to capture information. The first device they invented used patterns of ink that would glow under ultraviolet light, but this, much like Flint’s ideas, was not economically viable.

On the verge of giving up, the pair decided to pop to the beach to unwind. Woodland began absent-mindedly drawing Morse code dots in the sand, before drawing vertical lines from each dot. Suddenly, he had his sought-after “Eureka!” moment.

He thought if Morse code could be translated to the retail sphere, it could easily and quickly communicate product information. However, the pair then struggled on how to design the barcode label and to put it on a product.

Answering “How to do Barcode”, Teething Problems and Cashing In

Silver and Woodland were met with a few problems to solve, including how small a barcode can be, what it should look like, how to put a barcode on a product and how to plan out its overall design.

After some time struggling to envision the proto-barcode, they eventually perfected it by changing the lines on it to bulls-eye patterns. They then filed a patent for the barcode, which they named “Classifying Apparatus and Method” – very catchy. They sold the patent for $15,000 to Philco in 1962, who then sold it to RCA.

Following those years, RCA and IBM vied for barcode dominance until 1974, when the first barcode sale was completed in Troy, Ohio at 8:01 AM using IBM’s system. The first sale was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum for 67 cents. The rest, they say, is history.

Modern Developments

Since that day in 1974, barcodes have been used non-stop all over the world. Nowadays, airliners are trialling RFID tracking via barcodes so customers never lose their luggage again, scientists believe they can map the human brain using barcode technology, and the world of shipping is on its way to being dominated entirely by the technology.

Overall, the simple barcode label has come a long way from a futuristic thesis on retail shopping to a piece of technology that the world relies on.

It pays to have good barcode labels and Label Source has stocked the best in barcode labels for a variety of uses. For more from the ever-changing world of labels, be sure to follow Label Source on Facebook and Twitter.