NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS NEWS
Empowering Kiwi Businesses
OwlQR, a New Zealand software company, has launched a live platform that gives each product a QR code built on the GS1 Digital Link standard. Manufacturers and exporters can hold a product’s information in one place and revise it without changing the packaging. The service had been in beta testing; early customers include Taupō honey producer Honey Honey and tea brand The Tea Thief.
The standard puts a product’s Global Trade Item Number, or GTIN, inside a web address. Encoded in a QR code, that address lets a checkout scanner read the product’s identity, while a shopper’s phone opens the online product information from the same code.
A business adds a product, enters its details, and generates a code tied to a single product profile. Revised test results, certificates, or label information can then be loaded into that profile without a new QR code being printed on the pack. OwlQR says the service is built so that no integration project or developer is needed.
If a customer downgrades or cancels a plan, existing codes stay active, and product data remains available for export. The platform was designed and built in New Zealand and is hosted in AWS’s Sydney region. Optional compliance modules cover requirements including Halal, US FDA export, China GACC, and Amazon Transparency.
The launch comes as retailers prepare for GS1’s Sunrise 2027 target, under which point-of-sale systems are expected to scan 2D barcodes, including QR codes. A GS1 Digital Link code carries the GTIN needed at checkout while also linking to product information for shoppers and trading partners. Structured product data is also gaining importance as markets, including the European Union, introduce digital product passport rules, which vary by category of goods and jurisdiction.
Honey Honey sells raw, BioGro-certified organic Mānuka and native honey and faces heavy documentation demands when it exports. Mānuka sold for export must meet the Ministry for Primary Industries’ scientific definition and be tested batch by batch at a recognised laboratory. Some overseas markets also require an official export certificate with those results attached, alongside the organic certificate and market-specific labelling rules.
The Taupō producer now uses the QR code on the jar to display test results and organic certification. Artje Schrijvers of Honey Honey said the company had always held the proof, with every batch tested and all of its honey certified organic; the difficulty was keeping the records in one place. Buyers asking for a certificate or a test result previously meant searching folders and email threads, then repeating the exercise for the next buyer.
Schrijvers said the honey sells on being raw and organic, and that being able to show it rather than only state it on the label matters for a business of its size. Schrijvers also said no IT person was needed to set the system up.
Both founders say their own experience with export documentation shaped the service. Co-Founder and Director Carrick Graham previously took his TE WAI facial mist brand into overseas markets, while Co-Founder Tony Burt founded East Imperial tonics and exported beverages to more than 20 countries.
Graham said he worked through each market’s labelling and documentation requirements himself when taking TE WAI offshore, and that most manufacturers are not short of information but have it in too many places. Burt said nearly every country East Imperial sold into had its own requirements, and that brands should not have to start again each time they enter a new market or a customer asks for evidence.
For an exporter, the practical gain is that a pack printed once can keep pointing at current records. Certificates, laboratory results, and label details can be revised in the profile behind the code, which removes the need to reprint packaging each time a document changes or a buyer asks for evidence.
OwlQR is listed in the GS1 New Zealand solution provider directory. The platform is intended to help businesses organise and share product information; responsibility for the accuracy of that information stays with the business using it.
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