A3 PIM Industry, a product information management and distribution solution, offers brands a connector allowing them to share their data with CodeOnline Food.
A collective initiative led by GS1 France
Launched in October 2019, the CodeOnline Food service is the result of a collaboration between GS1 France and actors of the agri-food sector. Objective: to provide professionals with mandatory consumer information marked on packaging in accordance with the INCO regulation, supplied exclusively by brands and accessible to all. “This online service, easily accessible to everyone, offers brands of the food industry, and especially micro-enterprises and SMEs, the possibility of objectifying and digitizing the description of their products in the common GS1 language, affirms Paul Bounaud, Channels Manager at GS1 France. For us, this is an important tool for the inclusion of all French companies. "
Made available to the 10,000 member companies of the agri-food sector in order to create a common good, the CodeOnline Food online service contributes to the digitization and structuring of product information in the agri-food sector. The result of a two-year collaboration, more than 80 actors from the private and public sectors participated in this collective project: producers, manufacturers, retailers, digital solutions providers, public establishments, federations, associations and consumer applications. The embarkation phase of the sector’s brands on CodeOnline Food brought together nearly 2,950 companies that have chosen to share their data with CodeOnline Food, which represents a total of 40,000 GTIN product codes.
Consumer transparency as a goal
Faced with changes in consumption patterns, consumers' need for transparency and the emergence of multiple applications intended for them, brands must organize themselves to communicate better while controlling the information circulating on their products.
"The growing demands from all actors of the food ecosystem reinforce the need for a structured and objectified approach to product data, which is shared and accessible to all," continues Paul Bounaud. With this objective of common good, GS1 France coordinated, with CodeOnline Food, the tools allowing the exchange and updating between the various partners of the mandatory consumer information marked on the packaging, in accordance with the INCO regulation and based on information from a verified source. "
CodeOnline Food thus lists a large amount of information, including 35 consumer information, the majority of which comes from product packaging. These data are divided into 4 distinct categories: basic identity data (product GTIN code, brand, description, etc.), additional (labels, Nutri-Score, etc.), legal (name, nutritional declaration, ingredients ...) and product visuals (description of image content, expiry date, etc.). In short, the information necessary to meet the needs of consumers in terms of information and transparency. “Thanks to CodeOnline Food, we are strengthening consumer confidence in our products,” says Stéphanie Berthet, IT & Projects Coordinator at Dr. Oetker France.
Consumer applications, consumer associations, research institutes and other players can therefore have access - according to their needs – to reliable product information disseminated by the brands themselves. The data is made available to them through different means: API, manual search from an online interface or an open data file provided monthly.
Publish on CodeOnline Food from A3 PIM Industry
AGENA3000, GS1 France’s partner, promotes interoperability via a network of interconnected electronic catalogs, the GDSN, and works to help its manufacturer customers to control their product information while ensuring consumer transparency. Since the launch of CodeOnline Food, the A3 PIM Industry solution has enabled brands to make their product data available on CodeOnline Food, without any re-entry and in a few clicks, as they would do for other recipients (retailers, etc.). “AGENA3000 supports the CodeOnline Food initiative. The connector used to publish product data on CodeOnline Food from our PIM platform is made available free of charge to our manufacturer customers so that as many of them as possible can contribute to this database ”, concludes Jacky HUET, Global VP Sales & Marketing at AGENA3000.
