How data is redefining the food supply ft. Avery Dennison

In a world where data is king, the ability to track and trace products with precision is transforming industries—especially food.

In this mini-webinar, Peter Jackson, Senior Global Manager of Connected Packaging at Avery Dennison, shares how RFID technology is revolutionizing food traceability and supply chain efficiency.

He explains how RFID’s ability to scan thousands of items in seconds can prevent mass recalls, reduce waste, and build trust in data.

As brands race to improve efficiency and meet ambitious 2030 sustainability goals, Jackson highlights the need for executive buy-in and a clear return on investment to drive adoption—because in today’s fast-moving industry, the companies that embrace innovation will be the ones that thrive.

Full transcript:

Peter Jackson: You know, a lot of people are talking about AI, and everyone says AI is going to transform. The most important thing for AI is to have accurate data.

If you’ve got a food recall – let’s say romaine lettuce, dare I say, if I can raise that one- but we’ve got a food recall at the moment, what happens is they clear all the shelves across the whole of, let’s say, the U. S., North America and everything goes.

Whereas, when you’ve given something a digital identity – when you’ve got RFID traceability– you can say, “Hang on a second. We know where that came from, which farm, which location. We only need to take these ones out of circulation.”

The big thing with RFID is it’s what we call one-to-many. With a QR code and other technologies, it’s very much one-to-one. You have to scan one at a time. With RFID, you can scan thousands in a couple of seconds – thousands of items.

It also gives you a unique identity. So the big transition in food and particularly when linking to totes, RTIs and trays- those returnable assets – basically, is you can then link that to the food, and then that helps the retailer, the consumer, etc. So, from an RFID point of view, what it’s, what it’s basically doing is giving traceability, but in a way that people can trust the data.

That’s the important part. I think what’s happening is the brands that are looking into the future, and I don’t mean 10 years, I mean the next couple of three, four years maximum, they’re saying the industry itself is changing. So they’ve got to be more efficient. They’ve got to reduce labor costs, or at least the labor needs to be better utilized.

And technology is going to do that. I think that’s what will drive (RFID adoption) further from the basics that you talked about to why they will implement RIFID because it can operate at scale. So a lot of these big brands, big manufacturers, if they can move faster than they currently do today, then it might mean as they increase production, they actually don’t need a bigger warehouse.

And that’s the big cost. So that short-term saving ultimately was gonna, they’re gonna, they, they will start to implement things like RFID, but they might not do it overnight. From a C-suite point of view, you need that executive sponsorship that says. This is why we’re putting it in. This is what the return on investment will be.

And a lot of what we would do as an organization, for example, is to help people show that return on investment. You know, is it going to be 12 months or is it going to be 12 years? Twelve years, it’s probably not going to fly. C suite are not going to sign that off. 12 months. Yeah, probably that makes a lot of sense and then they can share that with their stakeholders.

So many organizations have set these 2030 goals and it’s coming 2030 and a lot of them now, I think, going to start starting to sort of get a bit nervous about it. It’s the same with the technology. They have to paint that and build a vision for the future. As a company did 20 years ago, (or)10 years ago, if they hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t be as vast as they are now.

But there’s always that battle of budget. Whatever sector and world and whatever you’re operating in, you need the accurate data. And that’s, that’s the importance of why we’re, why we’re focusing on what we’re focusing on and why a lot of organizations have already started transitioning.