How it works
Unique QR
Our unique QR codes reveal brand new, item-level insights whenever they’re scanned. Use our tags to trace every product’s journey from checkout to disposal, with all that data organised in a simple dashboard that updates in real time. And because our unique codes support QR experiences when they’re scanned by consumers, they enable personalised rewards, product-specific campaigns, and digital deposit return schemes that make recycling even more rewarding for your customers.
Use cases
Recycling rewards, made simple
With our unique-every-time QR codes, it’s easy to trace each unique product’s path through the supply chain. Leveraging the same technology as our QR codes, identifying where and when individual products are scanned, our unique codes add a digital fingerprint to each label. And with Polytag’s user-friendly platform, you can uncover new product strategies, enable new sustainability campaigns, and curate new, QR-driven experiences for your customers.
Digital Deposit Return Schemes
Incentivise recycling by assigning every label a deposit that your customers can redeem with a simple scan.
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Product Authentication
Pinpoint where your products are in the supply chain, verifying their authenticity every time they’re scanned.
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Rewards for Recycling
Transform recycling into a key brand interaction, with unique QR codes sending customers to your curated rewards pages.
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Digital Product Passport
Generate never-before-seen data on the composition and disposal of your products, pioneering your place in the circular economy.
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GS1 Standards
Who is GS1?
GS1 sets global standards for product identification systems such as the barcode and the QR code, ensuring interoperability and consistency across every link in the supply chain.
Complete Certainty
QR codes powered by GS1 can contain a unique serial number that guarantees that one scan is one purchase. This eliminates the risk of fraudulent scans and helps you leverage QR technology with confidence.
Digital Deposit Return Schemes
GS1 Digital Link enables brands to embed serial numbers in QR codes to make each code unique. This feature is fundamental to Digital Deposit Return Schemes (DDRS), which assign a deposit to each unique code for customers to redeem when recycling via a simple scan.
Product Traceability
Because GS1-approved QR codes can contain serial numbers, batch numbers, and expiration dates, every scan helps you trace your inventory from farm to fork. Use this never-before-seen data to support stock control processes and to rapidly respond to food safety incidents.
Why Polytag QR?
Leave a fingerprint on every product
Fraud-proof technology
By making every label truly one-of-a-kind, our unique QR codes are risk-free and protected from fraudulent activity - giving you the peace of mind to develop generous loyalty schemes, offer membership benefits, and reward every act of recycling.
Digital Deposit Return Scheme
Polytag provides everything you need to spearhead the future of deposit returns. From our secure tag and trace technology to our user-friendly insights dashboard, we help you track products from production to kerbside.
Meaningful marketing
Communicate directly with everyone who scans a Polytag code, using each brand-new interaction to better inform consumers, grow closer to your customer, and add a new dimension to competitions, rewards, and recycling initiatives.
Product authentication
Our unique QR codes serve to verify the authenticity of your products, strengthening your anti-counterfeiting and anti-theft approaches and building consumer confidence in your brand.
Case study
Ocado Retail launch a world-first
Back in 2023, Ocado Retail became the first company to fully leverage unique-every-time Polytag QR codes. In a world-first, we digitally printed our codes directly onto Ocado’s existing plate-printed labels – showcasing how seamless it can be to integrate with and benefit from Polytag technology. The pilot’s success has since driven further adoption of Polytag unique QR codes, which now feature on over 650 of Ocado’s product lines.
Objective
Ocado Retail's partnership with Polytag initially sought to demonstrate how unique QR codes could integrate with the firm’s large-scale and high-speed printing processes. With next-generation labels verified as cost-effective, Ocado Retail has since encouraged their customers to engage with QR codes as a means to promote the sustainable disposal of their packaging.
Outcome
The collaboration between Ocado Retail and Polytag yielded impressive results, with over 20 million unique QR codes printed to date. Utilising the Polytag platform, Ocado Retail built landing pages that offer customers tips to reduce food waste, and sustainable disposal advice, whenever their QR-labelled products are scanned. With these foundations in place, Ocado Retail leveraged our unique codes to incentivise recycling with a Rewards for Recycling Scheme. The firm offered customers a 20 pence reward for recycling their products, with all 20,000 redemptions claimed within just 55 days.
We champion the use of innovative technology as we strive to become the UK’s most sustainable grocery retailer. Polytag’s digital platform offers plenty of environmental and economic benefits for retailers and customers alike.
Polytag use cases
Digital deposit return schemes
Customer communication
Sustainability communication
Tracking and analytics
Technical partnerships
Hassle-free integrations
Printing
Polytag is integrated with the software and hardware operated by leading printers and converters. Our partnered printers and converters simply request codes from Polytag, produce the labels, and return a confirmation of exactly which serialised code was printed onto which product packaging.
Apps
Polytag has secure API integrations with a number of third-party apps. These apps are able to scan Polytag unique QR codes, check their authenticity, and manage customer claims. Polytag immediately updates the serialised code status, ensuring that rewards can only be claimed once.
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Embrace circularity with our serialised, unique-every-time QR codes. Get ahead of the curve.
