Member Article

Unilever and Nestlé sign up for productDNA

Unilever and Nestlé have become the first suppliers to sign up for GS1 UK’s productDNA service.

productDNA is an agreed common language for products, being created “for the industry, by the industry”. Key benefits of the new productDNA service for the UK grocery industry include:

• A common data model for all retailers using a set of agreed product attributes
• A simpler, faster product catalogue shared between suppliers and retailers
• Third party verification to improve the quality of product data

Both firms will begin using productDNA to launch new products in Tesco and Ocado.

GS1 UK is managing productDNA on behalf of the industry, through the Retail Grocery Advisory Board, whose members represent almost 80% of the UK retail grocery market.

The product data is owned by suppliers, without any third-party commercial constraints, with all the data attributes follow rules established by GS1 global standards.

Expressing how productDNA helps their customers and protect their brands, Richard Sadler, Customer Operations Director at Unilever commented: “ProductDNA provides a single platform for us to communicate our product information through to customers and, ultimately through to consumers. Doing this quickly, efficiently and once, we hope this will provide some benefits for Unilever and our consumers and customers alike.”

David Hix, Supply Chain Director, Nestlé UK, added: “The drive towards efficient end-to-end supply chains eradicating inefficiency and waste is of huge significance to us at Nestlé. productDNA is part of our strategy to improve efficiency and deliver better value to consumers and customers.”

Gary Lynch, CEO GS1 UK, said: “Our industry members have clearly understood that shoppers are increasingly looking for additional and better information about the products they are buying whilst at the same time suppliers want to ensure that their brands and products are well communicated in the market. We’re delighted that Nestlé and Unilever have helped create the productDNA service and will be the first to start using it to share the data about their wonderful products with retailers and shoppers alike”.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Retail News .