Track & Trace

Two new legal requirements from the European Union will come into force, on 5 April 2013 for identification (Track) and 5 April 2015 for traceability (Trace).

 

- European Directive 2008/43/EC of 4 April 2008, setting up, pursuant to Council Directive 93/15/EEC, a system of identification and traceability for explosives for civil uses.

 

- European Directive 2012/4/EU of February 2012, amending Directive 2008/43/EC.

 

Directive 93/15/EEC lays down rules for ensuring the safe and secure circulation of explosives on the community market. Directives 2012/4/EU and 2008/43/EC cover the set-up of a harmonised system for the unique identification and traceability of explosives for civil uses (military application and electric fuses are NOT concerned), in order to be able to identify those holding the explosives concerned by the scope of application at any time.

 

The objective is to prevent misuse and theft and to assist law enforcement authorities in the tracing of the origin of lost or stolen explosives. These two directives will come into force over two phases:

 

- As from 5 April 2013, each product and each packaging unit concerned shall be marked with a unique form of identification.

 

- As from 5 April 2015, all undertakings in the explosives for civil uses sector shall be required to ensure the traceability of each product and each packaging unit. Only the European community is concerned by these directives, so as soon as the products are expedited out of EU, the tracing process is stopped.

 

All finished goods and all packaging units will be marked with, respectively, a form of human readable identification and an electronically readable identification. The optical code (DataMatrix) contains the number of our production site (FR008) and the unique serial code. It will also contain additional information used by Davey Bickford and useful to our customers, such as the article number, the batch number, the OF number, the product quantity and the packaging level.

 

The Datamatrix code structure complies with the recommendations from the Federation of European Explosives Manufacturers (FEEM) and can be used to trace each product from its production up to its consumption. The most significant change will be the introduction of the Datamatrix code on each product label because, for packaging unit labels, Davey Bickford has already included Datamatrix on all its labels since June 2011. The project is moving forward as planned and we are currently integrating the software used to manage all unique numbers. In parallel, we introduce identification methods and resources in all production workshops in order to identify products.