BASF has announced the introduction of a new traceability technology for its crop protection products filling lines: Supply Chain Track and Trace (SCTT). The innovation will enable BASF to show and document the route its products take from the filling stage until they reach farmers. With SCTT, BASF aims to create further transparency in the supply chain and to fight product counterfeiting. The first production lines to implement the new technology are at the BASF’s sites in Tarragona, Spain, and in Genay and Gravelines, both located in France.
Starting this year, an increasing number of BASF crop protection products will include a machine-readable information in the form of a unique data matrix code on their labels. The code will contain relevant product information, such as global trade item number, batch number, production date, and a unique alphanumeric identifier. It can be scanned at each stage of the supply chain and the data will be stored for retrieval in a BASF database. Once the route of a product is being monitored and documented, farmers in particular will be able to easily verify BASF crop protection products with a new app called “CPP Verifier”. This will help them to check the authenticity of the product to make sure they can grow healthy, marketable crops.
“Improvements in our technology standard, such as SCTT, are very important to us,” explained Vincent Gros, Senior Vice President, BASF Crop Protection for Europe, Africa, Middle East, CIS and Central Asia. “It will help us combat product counterfeiting, a problem that involves a range of negative effects for farmers, consumers, and the environment. With SCTT, we are raising the bar to not compromise on safety.”
Through the implementation of SCTT, BASF is responding to current regulatory requirements in Europe as well as anticipating new regulations around the globe. SCTT is based on CRISTAL (Communicating Reliable Information and Standards to Agriculture and Logistics), which is supported by the European Crop Protection Association, Crop Life International, and the global standardization organization GS1. Over the near term, BASF will be implementing the technology in its production lines in Ludwigshafen, Germany, and will follow up with implementation at other facilities in Europe, South America and the United States within the next two years.
