- 93% of food and beverage (F&B) businesses feel confident they could manage a live product recall quickly and accurately – yet confidence is masking a readiness gap
- Nearly 4 in 5 of these same businesses believe product recalls and withdrawals are on the rise, and they estimate it would take them an average of four hours – almost half a shift – to trace every affected batch
- More than three quarters (77%) would need to consult two or more separate systems, spreadsheets or records to manage a live recall, and only 24% describe their traceability data as fully real time
- Foreign material or physical contamination is the leading cause of recalls, withdrawals and investigations (56%), ahead of undeclared allergens (40%) and labelling and packaging issues (39%)
Balloon One, the technology partner optimising global supply chains, has today launched research revealing a significant readiness gap across the UK’s chilled, convenience and ready-to-eat food sector. Food and beverage businesses are almost unanimously confident they could handle a live product recall, even as 78% say recalls and withdrawals are becoming more frequent.
This paradox runs deep. While 93% of businesses trust they could manage a recall quickly and accurately, a quarter (24%) say they would need five hours or more to find affected stock, and a quarter (25%) still track batch and expiry information on spreadsheets. With the cost of a serious incident put at over half a million pounds, this gap carries direct financial, reputational and operational risk for chilled, convenience and ready-to-eat food businesses across the UK.
According to the study, Trace Against Time, the sector is managing one of its most complex and time-critical processes on a patchwork of systems and manual records. More than three quarters (77%) say they would need to consult two or more separate systems, spreadsheets or records to manage a live recall. Only 24% describe their traceability data as fully real time across warehouse, production and customer orders, leaving teams to reconcile data between systems by hand more than 100 times a year, and just 38% have fully automated first-expired, first-out stock rotation.
More than half (55%) report incomplete or inconsistent batch and lot information, and 42% say expiry or shelf-life data is not always visible in real time. When asked how long it would take to identify every affected batch, stock location and customer destination across those systems, businesses estimate four hours on average, and almost a quarter (24%) say they would need five hours or more. Where batch data is linked to stock movement, the same exercise takes closer to ten minutes.
Craig Powell, Managing Director at Balloon One, said: “Most chilled food and beverage businesses tell us they have a recall plan, they test it regularly, and they trust it. They also tell us recalls are on the rise, so there’s clearly a paradox at play. It isn’t that recalls are badly managed, it’s that businesses have little oversight of the gaps in their own systems. When teams are manually reconciling data between production, warehouse management, QA and ERP, they’re exposing themselves to real commercial risk the moment they need to pull a product quickly and accurately.”
More than nine in ten (92%) businesses have recalled, withdrawn or investigated an issue involving sandwiches, wraps or food-to-go in the past 18 months, with chilled ready meals close behind at 91%, and prepared salads at 89%. The research shows the leading causes over the past 18 months were:
- Foreign material or physical contamination (56%)
- Undeclared allergens (40%)
- Labelling and packaging issues (39%)
- Chemical contamination (37%)
The commercial stakes for businesses getting this wrong are significant. UK F&B businesses estimate the total financial impact of a serious product recall or contamination issue to be around £545,249. Over the past 12 months, poor visibility of expiry dates and shelf life has already led to customer complaints for 39% of businesses and retailer chargebacks or penalties for a third (32.7%).
Product recall or withdrawal is now the third biggest operational concern in the sector (37%). Despite this, very few businesses point to their systems as the reason for higher recall risk. Instead, businesses see the drivers of recall risk as commercial pressure (51%) and supply chain complexity (46%), with shorter shelf lives and tighter delivery windows cited by 39%.
Powell adds, “Supply chain complexity and disconnected systems are cut from the same cloth, and the thread running through both is a lack of visibility over batch and expiry data. As it gets harder to move products through the supply chain, businesses urgently need to audit how they’re managing that data. Without the right visibility, the safest decision in a live recall is to pull everything – this can mean you end up withdrawing far more stock than the problem warrants and absorbing the retailer penalties and lost sales that follow. Bringing it into one connected system is what lets you move quickly when a serious issue does land.”
