The use of 2D barcodes at the Australian supermarket Woolworths in the spotlight

Case Study

Woolworths is the largest retailer in the Australia/New Zealand region and counts more than 1,000 stores. In addition to general food products, they also offer a wide range of various articles such as household products.

In 2019, Woolworths began piloting 2D barcodes (GS1 DataMatrix) at the Point-of-Sale for fresh meat and poultry products, to meet the increasing expectations of end consumers and suppliers.

A 2D barcode can contain a lot of information. Next to product identification, you can also encode product information like expiry date, country of origin, etc.

It enables the retailer to manage the stock on a more detailed level and avoid food waste by recognizing automatically the expiry date at the checkout. This is one of Woolworths’ reasons to transfer completely to the new generation of barcodes.