Lagos – A specialist in export packaging,Mr Tunde Odunlami, has urged business persons to improve the standard of packaging their non-oil export products so as to boost their patronage in the international market.
He told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Lagos that packaging and branding non-oil export products required ”barcodes” and serial numbers for easy access to not less than 120 countries.
Odulami, Chief Executive Officer of Global Standard One (GS1) Nigeria, stressed that the use of barcodes for exporting finished products was for proper identification of such products in the international market.
GS1 is a not-for-profit organisation that generates barcodes for packaged goods.
“Anybody that manufactures, produces, farmers whatever you do, you want to be identified by your products.
“If you want identification, and you want that identification to go beyond your boundary, to become global, you need to stick a barcode
“Now, the kind of barcode you put on your product, if it’s a GS1 barcode, automatically, you are fed into the GS1 global systems,which means that your product is automatically known.
“Because there are certain standards that that barcodes are built on, it means you have just opened up for yourself, a 120-country market that you can send your goods to, by exporting and you can do fair-trade.
“Because it is one of the requirements in each of those countries.’’
Odunlami stressed that barcodes could be used to channel information about the business to all the countries in the world, and also create a channel of communication between manufacturers and consumers.
He said that the serial number on the codes could be used to attend to their customers’ complains online.
“As a business person, you can use the same barcodes to communicate with the consumer, because now we are in a digital age, information is what everybody wants on a daily basis.
“So, the more information you out- and this time, this is you, not s third party, not somebody going to the shelf and picking up your product.
“GS1 is giving you the ability to put your own stamp of approval on your information.’’
(NAN)
