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Adhesion and Durability at Low Temperatures
Freezer stickers are made with special adhesive and materials designed to work in extreme cold environments making them irreplaceable in food storage compared to standard paper stickers. Their main materials are designed to withstand cold environments. Their special cold-resistant adhesive will stick to packaging in cold environments and will adhere to the packaging even with moisture. Most cool environments will cause packaging to lose its stickiness, however, in cold chain storage in warehouses with temperatures ranging from -18 to -40 degrees Celsius, synthetic paper freezer stickers from a cold chain storage warehouse stuck and remained fully intact with no stickers falling off or losing clarity of any printing.
Freshness and Temperature Tracking
Maintaining food purity and quality in cold chain storage systems hinges critical on accurate temperature tracking. Freezer stickers accompany a bar code or a two-dimensional code. The stickers are temperature labeled and have codes that link to a cold chain temperature and humidity sensing system. This records the storage temperature of a product in real-time. The US FDA has a standard for the monitoring of food cold chain temperatures. It is a requirement that all frozen foods have temperature documentation for food safety. One quick-frozen fruit and vegetable company used freezer stickers, and the system will automatically alarm if the temperature is above the standard. After one year, the company implemented a freezer sticker system for temperature monitoring. Their product deterioration rate reduced from 12% to 3%. This reduced the value loss from damaged goods. In actual practice, companies are required to integrate the sticker code with the warehouse management system. With a sticker code scan, employees are able to obtain real-time temperature data of the products. This is a straightforward temperature tracking practice.
Improved Efficiency for Cold Storage
Freezer stickers have been shown to simplify processes within cold storage to improve sorting efficiency. The freezer stickers have special coatings that last and are easily digitally printed. These stickers won't fade quickly and are easily scanned by warehouse scanning devices. The warehouse and logistics sector have digital management and are very selective. With that said, they have stated that consistent stickers increase efficiency. One large food storage company, in optimizing their warehouse labeling with standard freezer stickers and consistent print and placement formats, has seen sorting efficiency increase by 25% and has seen a 90% decrease in manual identification errors, saving a lot of warehouse labor costs. In cold storage operations, for freezer stickers to achieve their highest scanning recognition, they should be placed as flat as possible. For stickering devices, the operation should be performed in a dry environment above 0°C. The condition will improve scanning recognition.
Freezer Sticker Compliance
Freezer stickers can serve as a communicative channel for food traceability as well as for various compliance regulations for different countries and regions' food laws. These stickers can show all information required for traceability, such as batch number, list of ingredients, allergy information, date of production, and the stickers can endure the cold-chain process, making the information trackable and queriable. When it comes to food labeling, the FDA is the strictest, and the FSMA reiterates the case by providing additional traceability criteria for imported foods—information of food must be complete and accurate, and from a labeling perspective, the label must be attached, adhered, and not fall off. One meat product enterprise involved in the export business used FDA-compliant freezer stickers and had allergen and net content information. The enterprise has been FDA-import-audited and has not had a single case of detained cargo due to labeling.
Businesses that export products must list the eight main allergens the FDA recognizes on the freezer stickers in standard format and keep their font size and layout consistent with the FDA’s labeling regulations, as this is a vital point for successfully completing a regulatory audit.
Supply Chain Cost Optimization
Food cold chain supply chain costs can be optimized by applying quality freezer stickers which reduces costs from both materials and labor. Freezer stickers are highly durable which means that labeling can last the entire cold chain process from production to storage and transportation. This eliminates the need for relabeling due to label destruction, reducing the need for labeling material. Food supply chain cost management studies show that optimizing packaging materials can save 3 to 8 percent on the total supply chain costs. A small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) in the prepared food sector used cost-effective PP PE synthetic paper freezer stickers to replace the previous ordinary labels that need to be repeatedly pasted. After one year, there was a visible impact on costs as the SME reduced labeling material and labor costs by 6%. Different-sized enterprises have a clear path to selection. Small and medium-sized enterprises can use general synthetic paper stickers to control costs. In contrast, large enterprises with extended storage and high packaging requirements should use durable PET film stickers, which provide the best balance of cost and performance.
Freezer stickers can easily be adapted to the various storage requirements for different kinds of frozen foods. This is one of the reasons for their broad usage in the food industry. The Food Industry Association's cold chain packaging recommendations suggest that when choosing freezer stickers, the form of the food packaging must be considered. For example, plastic film stickers are best for soft packaging foods like frozen vegetable bags and flexible packaged meat products. The film will easily conform to the packaging and won't break as it flexes. For heavy packaged foods like frozen seafood and bulk frozen rice products, PET film stickers are best due to their high resistance to scratching and punctures. Most frozen foods like quick-frozen dumplings and frozen fruits are best served by PP PE synthetic paper stickers. One of the comprehensive food enterprises used different types of freezer stickers across three products, quick-frozen rice noodles, frozen seafood, and prepared food. After actual use, the labeling qualified rate reached 99.5%, and it completely satisfied the storage and transportation requirements for the various products.
Choosing the proper freezer label sticker based on the product attributes can not only guarantee the intended use, but also prevent the unnecessary use of materials due to poor choice.