Guidance for online food retailers: DIN SPEC 91360

How can consumers who place their products in their shopping cart online be guaranteed that all their products, such as eggs, milk, cheese & ice cream, arrive at the right temperature and have not been damaged in the cold chain? What is the specific requirement of the packaging?

These or similar questions reach us at Landpack every day from online food retailers. Until now, there has been no specific standard that has dealt with these issues in detail.

In order to establish trust between online retailers and consumers, key players in the e-food and packaging industry, including Landpack, have joined forces with the German Institute for Standardization (DIN) to develop a standardized “Temperature concept for the shipping of chilled and non-chilled goods in the food online trade”, the DIN SPEC 91360. The new DIN defines the requirements and specifications for packaging and dispatch of consignments of goods as well as for cold chains in the food online trade.

The short and sweet of the standard:

• Definition of processes from the preparation of the shipment through delivery to the return of the reusable and disposable packaging used.
• Determination of requirements and test methods for packaging concepts with passive cooling systems under certain temperature conditions
• Approach to concept validation

This has created a good standardised tool for online food retailers.

An attractive document with all information about the new DIN SPEC 91360 can be found here.

The whole standard can be downloaded free of charge here.