Creating Supply Chain Efficiency in the Food Industry with SSCC Integration
How QBEX is helping Dairy Partners and Abergavenny Fine Foods streamline traceability and efficiency with SAP Business One
A Practical Challenge in the Food Industry
One of the recurring challenges we see in the food industry is not the making of great products, but the movement of them. Getting goods from one supplier to another reliably, with complete traceability, is mission-critical.
For clients like Dairy Partners, who send cheese to Abergavenny Fine Foods, this means every pallet, every unit, and every delivery must be identifiable, trackable, and receivable with no margin for error.
This is where SSCCs - Serial Shipping Container Codes - come in.
What is an SSCC?
The Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) is a unique, 18-digit identifier assigned to a specific logistic unit (such as a pallet or container) at the point of creation. Think of it as a passport for each pallet, a unique identity that travels with it across the supply chain.
It sits within the GS1 global system of standards, which ensures no overlap in codes anywhere in the world. The SSCC is encoded in a GS1-128 barcode, which can be scanned quickly and reliably. The same information is also shared electronically through EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) messages, providing the recipient with advanced notice of what’s coming.
Why SSCCs Matter in Food Industry Supply Chains
Traceability: Every logistic unit can be tracked at each stage, ensuring complete visibility.
Efficiency: Scanning a single SSCC at goods receipt replaces time-consuming manual reconciliations.
Information Sharing: Links production dates, batch numbers, and other vital details directly to the pallet.
Standardisation: Ensures suppliers and customers are speaking the same global “language” of logistics.
Error Prevention: The uniqueness of SSCCs prevents duplication or misidentification.
In industries like dairy and cheese production, where quality, freshness, and compliance are non-negotiable, these benefits translate directly into lower risk and smoother operations.
What We Did: SAP Business One Meets Real-World Logistics
At QBEX, we’ve been working with our food industry customers to integrate SSCCs into their SAP Business One workflows.
For Dairy Partners and their trading partner Abergavenny Fine Foods, we developed a solution where SSCCs created in SAP (via Notes/Items) can be scanned directly into the Goods Receipt process. This eliminates manual reconciliation and ensures both parties are working with the same, accurate dataset.
The outcome?
Faster receiving at Abergavenny.
Tighter traceability across the supply chain.
A smoother customer–supplier relationship based on reliable data.
The Bigger Picture: Why This Matters
The food industry is under constant pressure: regulatory demands, supply chain disruptions, and increasing customer expectations. Solutions like SSCC integration aren’t just technical tweaks, they’re fundamental to how modern food businesses stay competitive.
By enabling end-to-end traceability and efficiency, we’re helping our customers future-proof their operations while meeting today’s demands.
Turning Standards into Simplicity
Standards like SSCC are powerful, but only if they’re applied in ways that make life simpler for real businesses. That’s our focus at QBEX: taking international standards, powerful ERP software, and industry-specific requirements, and turning them into solutions that deliver clarity, confidence, and efficiency.
For Dairy Partners, Abergavenny Fine Foods, and many others, this is the kind of quiet but vital progress that keeps the supply chain moving.
Key Takeaway:
Managing over a million items is only possible when every single one has an identity. SSCCs give it that identity and with the right systems in place, they make complex supply chains feel simple.