Food & Drink Traceability
RFID & QR for Connected Identity. Built for Demanding Environments.
In food & drink, traceability underpins product safety, quality assurance, sustainability, and regulatory compliance. Products move through multiple production, handling, and distribution stages, often under demanding environmental conditions. Maintaining reliable identification throughout these stages is critical.
Common Traceability Challenges
Food & drink environments introduce specific considerations:
Environmental stress – moisture, temperature changes, washdown, and contact with food can degrade labels and affect readability
High throughput – large volumes leave little margin for manual intervention or rework
Mixed packaging formats – glass, plastic, paper, and flexible materials require different label constructions
Recall precision – traceability must support fast, targeted recalls without disrupting unaffected batches
System alignment – production, quality, ERP, and regulatory systems must reference the same product identity
Watermill helps customers address these challenges by designing label and identification strategies that are robust, verifiable, and suited to real production conditions.
Environmental stress
High throughput
Recall precision
Mixed packaging formats
System alignment
Drivers Shaping Food & Drink Traceability
Watermill helps customers respond pragmatically to the four key drivers shown below — providing targeted solutions grounded in reality, avoiding over-engineering.
Food safety regulation
Sustainability reporting and waste reduction
Circularity and packaging accountability
Digital Product Passport readiness
Traceability Technology Basics
Food traceability typically relies on:
Barcodes for batch identification, regulatory disclosure, and consumer-facing information
RFID where automation is required or manual scanning becomes impractical
In some food applications, RFID’s ability to retain information with the product itself is essential, particularly where data must persist across multiple handling stages. Watermill advises customers on how to combine these technologies in a way that is cost-effective, compliant, and operationally robust.
Barcodes 
Low cost, widely adopted, and effective where line-of-sight and manual interaction are sufficient
RFID 
Enabling automatic identification, bulk reading, and interaction without direct visibility, even in complex environments
How Watermill Works with Food & Drink Customers
Watermill works alongside food and drink customers to:
Supply labels designed for demanding environments
Advise on the right balance of barcode and RFID
Verify identity before products enter the supply chain
Guide system and hardware choices
Support scale across product lines and production sites
