Food, grocery and beyond - ProductRecallNZ’s potential for safer supply chains

Product recalls or withdrawals across a supply chain are vital for protecting consumers and maintaining brands. ProductRecallNZ has become a key service for the food and grocery sector since its launch in 2012, and the application for other sectors is promising. The platform enables food and grocery businesses to action recalls and product withdrawals with speed and efficiency.

Recalls and withdrawals are common in the food and grocery sector and are an important part of ensuring consumers are protected, should an issue with a product be detected. The most common recall causes are undeclared allergens (milk, gluten, soy), microbiological contamination (listeria, salmonella), or foreign matter (plastic, packaging), as highlighted by MPI’s Consumer Level Food Recalls Annual Report 2024.

However, the food and grocery sector is not alone in the need to recall or withdraw products. Recall incidents have occurred across many sectors in New Zealand and have most recently included children’s toys, heaters, and vehicles prompting the question – what is the role of the ProductRecallNZ service for other sectors?

Powering safer shopping

The ProductRecallNZ service as used in the food & grocery sector came from an industry request to do something better, faster and with less ambiguity than emails, phone calls and physical visits to stores common at the time. Modelled off a similar service run for industry by GS1 Canada, the service has a robust communication workflow that ensures complete and accurate data is sent to each recipient. Affected stock is tracked and reported with confirmation that products have been removed from sale back to the supplier initiating the recall or withdrawal. GS1’s Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), the barcode number that you see on most products is central to this system, enabling universal product identification across the supply chain.

In 2025 around 2,400 New Zealand-based companies supplying into the Food and Grocery sector were subscribed to the ProductRecallNZ service. There were also around 754 receiver (retail stores and organisations) registered on the platform, including New Zealand’s major retailing groups in the food and grocery sector. From September 2024 to September 2025, ProductRecallNZ was used to support 276 product recalls and withdrawals.

Protecting brand integrity

Food safety in New Zealand is taken very seriously, and recalls must be quickly acted upon to ensure the safety of consumers. But what if the risk is to your brand? A glaring error on the packaging, or the product not being up to standard may not pose an overt health and safety risk to the public, but could damage the reputation of your brand.

ProductRecallNZ’s withdrawal process enables brands to communicate immediately actionable withdrawal notifications that can prevent unsatisfactory products being sold to consumers. History has shown that ProductRecallNZ’s streamlined notifications and compliance reporting save time and resources compared to manual processes - processes that often result in products being missed or recalls coming too late, once product has already been sold. Suppliers having to effect a major recall have gone on record suggesting that the hours involved in managing a recall have been reduced by 60-80%.

A smarter solution – recall applications in other sectors

The DIY/hardware/general merchandise sector deals with products that can pose safety issues if they are defective. Recent recalls in the sector include a rechargeable spotlight with lithium-ion batteries that were identified as a safety issue due to excessive heat, and fibreglass sledgehammers identified as a safety hazard due to the head detaching unexpectedly.

Major retailers had already been investigating the role of ProductRecallNZ in their sector before the recent high-profile recall of children’s coloured sand occurred (where asbestos was detected). Whilst not a complete solution to product safety issues, ProductRecallNZ’s standards-based, single centralised platform could create real efficiencies for recall and withdrawal across many retail sectors such as hardware, general retail, and healthcare.