Redwood City, Calif. – YottaMark, Inc., the leader in traceability and authentication solutions, announced today that its subsidiary HarvestMark de México has partnered with GS1 México to provide fresh produce traceability expertise and best practice training to Mexican grower/shippers and exporters. GS1 will unveil the Fresh Produce Traceability Center of Excellence, a state-of-the-art educational center that provides traceability training and demonstrations in the GS1 knowledge center located in Mexico City.
The new Fresh Produce Traceability Center of Excellence will feature the HarvestMark traceability platform running HarvestMark PTI, which delivers PTI compliant case-level traceability to meet the upcoming Produce Traceability Initiative deadline, as well as HarvestMark for Items, which extends traceability to individual packages of food that reach the end consumer. Visitors will receive hands-on demonstrations of PTI labeling, hybrid pallet tag printing, and item-level traceability for a range of pack styles including clamshells, bags, and individual PLU stickers. They will also see examples of enterprise applications that deliver improved efficiency and operations, such as the rich analytics that are generated from the HarvestMark traceability platform.
GS1 México and HarvestMark de México will also develop a produce traceability educational curriculum that will include a training program and traceability events, the first of which will be held this fall.
“We recognize that providing best practice examples and training programs is critical in helping Mexican grower/shippers and exporters easily and cost effectively embrace traceability,” said Miguel Ángel Peralta, General Director of GS1 México. “Our partnership with HarvestMark de México allows us to leverage their expertise helping grower/shippers and exporters throughout North America deploy successful traceability programs.”
Both companies will work with influential agricultural organizations throughout México to promote fresh produce traceability and compliance with the Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) deadline of December 31, 2011.
“We are honored that GS1 México has selected us for this important program, and we look forward to supporting the new center of excellence.” said J. Scott Carr, CEO YottaMark. “More than 200 HarvestMark PTI systems have been deployed by grower/shippers. Working with GS1, we will provide expertise and best practices that have been proven to work for grower/shippers across Mexico and North America.”
The HarvestMark traceability platform is in use by hundreds of shippers across thousands for farms from Canada to Argentina. HarvestMark PTI makes compliance with the Produce Traceability Initiative easy to implement and manage for a simple flat annual fee. The solution includes all the hardware and software needed to produce PTI-compliant case, RPC, and pallet labels. Trace-back, trace-forward, and optional production data is hosted at HarvestMark.com, delivering valuable reporting, and enabling on-demand traceability anywhere in the supply chain.
About HarvestMark Traceability Solutions
HarvestMark® is the industry-leading fresh food traceability platform from YottaMark, Inc. To date, more than 3 billion packages of fresh food have been enabled with HarvestMark traceability, from the produce aisle to the meat case. Designed for a wide range of fresh products, the HarvestMark platform supports industry standard case- and pallet-level traceability. HarvestMark for Items extends the platform to individual sales units, tracing from farm to fork, helping reconnect shoppers with the people who grow and sell their food. HarvestMark solutions speed food safety communication and enable unparalleled insight into the fresh supply chain. The HarvestMark platform supports more than a dozen harvest and production workflows and open integration with existing systems. Visit HarvestMark.com or call us at call 1-866-76-TRUST (or +1.650.264.6200). For more information about YottaMark, Inc., visit YottaMark.com.
Source: HarvestMark Traceability Solutions