Arvato Systems ensures market access in Russia for Emmi

• With a serialization solution from Arvato Systems, the renowned manufacturer of dairy products now complies with new Russian import regulations
• The overall solution integrates seamlessly into automated processes

The product serialization solutions by Arvato Systems make it possible: The Swiss company Emmi AG can now track its products worldwide along the entire distribution chain and at the same time safeguard its business in the strategically important Russian market effectively. This is because since summer 2021, dairy products imported into Russia must comply with complex traceability and serialization regulations. Regulations which are already in place or imminent for many other consumer products.

The Swiss-based Emmi AG currently exports more than 100 different products to Russia. These products, which are distributed in Russia via an exclusive importer, originate from various highly automated production facilities inside Switzerland. The serialization solution by Arvato Systems that has now been introduced fits seamlessly into these intricate production and logistics processes.

Complex requirements always in focus
“Once we understood how complex the new Russian regulations are and what exactly they entail for us, we soon realized that we needed a strong external partner,” explains Marco Cioci, who is responsible for Emmi’s business in Russian, among others. Arvato Systems was chosen as a stringent one-stop solution for the system integration of all internal and external players and processes.

The company, part of the Bertelsmann Group, draws on valuable experiences from numerous serialization projects, for example in the pharmaceutical industry. “Arvato Systems understood exactly how Emmi works and explained complex serialization issues to us in a clearly understandable way,” Cioci continues.

Smooth go-live follows excellent planning
The overall solution implemented with Arvato Systems works via an individually developed SaaS setup (Software as a Service). Right at the production stage, each cheese wheel, for example, is labeled with a data matrix code, making it unique. This code meets all serialization requirements for export to Russia. And it enables Emmi to track its products along the global distribution chain and retrieve relevant product data at any time, such as the date of manufacture, shelf life, and details of the product’s circulation.

In an intensive conception and planning phase, the project team at Emmi and Arvato Systems involved many stakeholders – from IT, production, and logistics all the way to authorities in Russia. „We worked closely with Emmi to develop all details of the project, precisely tailored to the individual requirements,” explains Oliver Meihorst, the responsible sales manager at Arvato Systems. “An important success factor was that experienced Russian-speaking team members from Arvato Systems directly liaised with the Russian partners and authorities.“ Thanks to this excellent preparation, the new system, along with the necessary labeling machines, was set up and launched in about two weeks.

Russia is only just the beginning
The mandatory product ID for exporting to Russia is just one of the benefits of the new system, however. “We have a lot of ideas about what other benefits we can get from the solution,” Cioci gives as an outlook. One focus here is anti-counterfeiting, grey marketing, and the effective traceability of Emmi goods, for example in order to safeguard against product liability issues. And finally, serialized products offer interesting opportunities in product advertising and customer loyalty.

For Emmi, the serialization project with Arvato Systems is a comprehensive success: for their independent and secure access to the Russian market and for opening up completely new opportunities in the areas of product safety, brand protection, and digital marketing. https://www.arvato-systems.com/more/about-arvato-systems/references/emmi