Freshtrack SoftwareTM has recently been launched in the US following the recent E. coli breakout which ravaged the Californian baby spinach industry. Freshtrack SoftwareTM is a supply chain management and traceability system for the fresh produce industry. The system is able to track the origin of fresh produce from the retail shelf.

Freshtrack SoftwareTM was created in Australia where it is used by the major packing houses with a number of large packers overseas rapidly adopting the system in Europe, South America and the US. The system payback time is usually about 12 months with the additional marketing advantage of being able to guarantee true and instant traceability of all produce packed.

Packhouse managers using Freshtrack SoftwareTM have reported increased production through reduced bottleneck areas in grading and packing, reduced administration costs through elimination of manual data entry, and lower floor staff costs as all manual recording and tallying of grower batches and packed product is eliminated. The marketing benefits to packhouses is substantial when talking with retailers as the packhouse can provide certifiable guarantees that they know exactly where produce came from down to the grower’s orchard lot, including the spray history and harvest date of produce.

Freshtrack SoftwareTM can be used with any grading or packing equipment and is a Windows XP based application with an SQL open database to interface with any accounting software. Harvest deliveries are recorded on the software and produce is followed through the grading and packing processes. As it is packed a label is printed and affixed, this may be after pre-sizing and before cool storage, or after the fruit is packed in cartons. Information can be retained for each harvest delivery from growers and labels may include whichever details are required by management, certification bodies or customers, i.e. grower orchard lot, produce variety, packing shed, harvest date, sprays used, size and grade details from the grading process, individual packer (where an RFID wrist band is used), and marketer and consignee details. Labels can be printed with UPC compliant barcodes. Data may also be encoded with RFID chips on pallets and cartons.

Bar-code labels are scanned where produce re-enters the production line, for example after cool storage bulk packed produce may be repacked for distribution and sale and details are retained and printed on new labels.

RFID wrist bands worn by packing staff identify carton labels back to individual packers which allows for quality assurance and provides the allowance for piece rates to be paid. This feeds back into payroll systems.

In line scanners can be set up to read the barcodes for palletizing. This has proved to be a huge time saver as a pallet manifest automatically prints when the pallet is full and operators are not required for this.

Freshtrack SoftwareTM is revolutionizing the fresh produce industry and is being installed in major packing sheds around the world. The system is installed turn-key including printers, scanners, wiring, software and PCs.

For more information about FreshtrackTM contact Freshtrack SoftwareTM at info@freshtracksoftware.com or visit www.freshtracksoftware.com