E-Performance – the new standard in the meat industry
Intended as the new standard throughout the meat sector, the new ‘E-Performance' was designed on the initiative of the GS1 Germany in close collaboration with the retail and meat industry.
Having both extensive experience with the manufacture of reusable transport packaging for the food industry and profound market knowledge of the meat sector, bekuplast was crucially involved in the development of E-Performance. The retail and industry experts joined forces with the aim to establish E Performance, the latest generation of meat containers, as industry-wide solution in order to remedy existing problems surrounding the red Euro standard meat box.
No less than 13 companies from the meat industry already committed themselves to exclusively order the bright blue E Performance container according to the GS1 specification as of the 1st of July 2014, having been the first to sign a code of conduct with GS1 Germany which governs the cornerstones of the conversion process. The plan is to have the red meat boxes largely replaced with bright blue containers until 2019.
The new meat container offers a number of advantages: It’s much easier to spot the container’s blue fragments than those produced by red boxes. Moreover, the container’s bright blue colour hinders the use of non-food compliant recycling material. Another benefit is that both the geometry of the container bottom as well as the corner design has been greatly improved, which makes it the container of choice for automatic handling by storage, transport and conveyor facilities.
E Performance is provided with an inmould label on all sides to ensure traceability and easy identification across the supply chain, and to facilitate container management. The inmould labels are permanently fixed to the plastic during the manufacturing process, making them durable, hygienic and resistant to industrial washing processes.
The containers bear a sequential coding that consists of a one-dimensional bar code and a two-dimensional data matrix code. The GS1 coding guarantees that every single container is clearly identifiable.
Thanks to its form and smooth surface, E Performance is very straightforward to clean. The meat container is provided with nubbed segments on all four sides, with the nubs having a greater diameter and flat tops. The adhesive labels will stick perfectly to this structure while retaining good removability in the washing process.