Published on the 28/08/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Amongst the current focus on manuka honey authenticity and traceability, one 100-year-old Kiwi honey-maker has turned to technology to prove its quality and provenance…
In what is believed to be a world first, Airborne Honey has released online tool TraceMe into the wild. The tool allows customers around the world to look up specific details about the contents of their honey jar. The details available include pollen percentage, colour, conductivity, glucose levels and whether the honey has been heat damaged. The honey can also be tracked all the way back to the hives with the tool pinpointing it’s provenance on a map of New Zealand.
“This technology allows us to be completely transparent,” explained Peter Bray, Airborne Honey managing director. “We are giving customers and retailers everything they need to identify their honey, whether it is manuka, clover or any other honey in the range, as true to variety, undamaged and traceable. The ‘traceable’ feature will also make it easier for consumers and importers overseas to identify counterfeit honey – something that continues to be a problem internationally.”
TraceMe works by scanning a QR code on the honey label with a smartphone, tablet or iPod. The QR codes on the honey jar labels themselves are printed using Airborne Honey’s own cutting-edge Hitachi Continuous Inkjet Printer which is thought to be the only printer of its kind currently being used for QR codes in Australasia.
Customers who do not have a smartphone or tablet can also use TraceMe via the Airborne Honey homepage or http://abh.tips and enter the batch number in the TraceMe section to find all the details about that particular jar of honey.
Airborne Honey says the launch of TraceMe is timely given the current focus on manuka honey authenticity. The Ministry of Primary Industries released an Interim Labelling Guide for Manuka Honey last week, which includes recommended information to print on honey labels, including pollen presence, HMF (a measure of heat damage) colour and conductivity, all of which are recorded by TraceMe.
TraceMe data also closely relates to measurements recognised by the Codex International Standard for Honey.
The details will also serve as empirical evidence of Airborne Honey’s high standards. For example, manuka honey should be at least 70 percent manuka pollen, based on longstanding research and recommendations from Codex, however, the MPI guidelines only require a “presence” of manuka pollen, which means products with as little as seven percent can pass a manuka honey.
“The data provided by TraceMe gives consumers all the information they need to make fully informed purchase decisions. The power is in their hands now. We believe it’s a great step forward for both Airborne Honey and the New Zealand honey industry,” said Bray.
