Traceability in a roastery: from green lot to customer
If a customer finds a stone in a bag, you need to know within hours which green lot it came from, which batches used it and who else received them. How to set that up.
6 min read Updated 9 October 2026
Article 18 of retained Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 requires food businesses to identify who supplied them with any food or ingredient, and which businesses they supplied, often summarised as one step back and one step forward. Consumers are not included in the forward step, but your records must let you trace any batch to the businesses you sold it to.
The chain to record
Worked example
A roastery's traceability chain
- Supplier and green lot reference
- Arrival date, sacks and storage location
- Roast batch number and green lots used
- Pack run, best before and lot code
- Wholesale customer or order
- Complaint or recall linked back to the batch
Making it work day to day
Records that make tracing possible
- Every green lot gets an internal reference on arrival, written on the sacks
- Every roast batch records which lots and how many kilos went in
- Every pack run records which batches were packed and the lot code printed
- Every wholesale delivery note or invoice records the products and lot codes
- Blends record the batch of each component
Recalls
If you have reason to believe food you supplied is unsafe, you must withdraw it from the market and, where it may have reached consumers, recall it, and inform your local authority, which works with the Food Standards Agency. Have a written procedure: who decides, who contacts customers, how stock is quarantined and how you record what was recovered.
Test it
Pick a bag at random every few months and trace it back to the green lot and forward to every customer who received the same batch. Time it. If it takes more than a few hours, simplify your records before you need them for real.
Where Roastnet helps
Questions roasters ask
- What traceability records does a coffee roaster need?
- Records linking each green lot to its supplier, each roast batch to the lots used, each packed lot to its batches, and each delivery to the business that received it.
- How long should traceability records be kept?
- Long enough to cover the product's shelf life and any likely complaint. Many businesses keep them for several years; check your local authority's expectation.
Official sources
- Food Standards Agency: Food traceability, withdrawals and recalls
- legislation.gov.uk: Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, Article 18
Rules change. These sources were checked on 9 October 2026; always confirm the current position with the body that publishes them before you act.
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