Coöperatie Hoogstraten: traceability solution with vision and RFID

The customer

Coöperatie Hoogstraten (formerly known as Veiling Hoogstraten) was established in 1933, making it one of the oldest fruit and vegetable auctions in Belgium. Hoogstraten strawberries have developed into a worldwide quality brand, accounting for an annual sales of 30 million kilograms.

The challenge

Coöperatie Hoogstraten attaches great importance to the traceability of its products throughout the chain, where food safety is playing a significant role. As the strawberries originate from some 200 strawberry growers, this process is logistically not easy to achieve. The former plastic punnets filled with strawberries by the growers were equipped with a lasered code, but this code was not unique: one code applied to 1 200 pieces in a box or 30 000 pieces per pallet. 

When switching from plastic to cardboard punnets, Coöperatie Hoogstraten also decided to abandon the error-prone traceability process and to strongly invest in the automation of its logistics chain.

Hans Vanderhallen, General Manager

“By linking the QR codes to an RFID tag, a unique link is established between the consumer and the producer who filled the punnets with Hoogstraten® strawberries."

The solution

The Proof of Concept quickly showed that both QR and RFID scanning were required to link the punnets and trays with strawberries, and the pallets carrying them. Aucxis was responsible for the RFID part and established the required links, while our partner VistaLink took care of the reading of the QR codes by using vision technology.  

Procedure

The cardboard punnets are shaped by machine, put in trays and equipped with a unique QR code with the data of the growers, after which an operator puts them on a pallet. After the stacking process, the pallet is transported to the label machine through a roller conveyor. In order to enable the tracing of the pallet with the trays and punnets, Aucxis provides an RFID label (pallet ID) grouping all trays on this pallet. This pallet label is then scanned along with the QR codes of the trays in one of the two vision tunnels of VistaLink, establishing the link between the pallet label and the corresponding trays and punnets.

“This project is the first major step in optimising the traceability process. In the future, the QR codes on the trays will also be used to scan the full strawberry boxes. In this way, we have targeted information about the harvesting time of the strawberries and the location they went to.”
Jeroen Swolfs, Operations Manager Coöperatie Hoogstraten