Due to the fact that some retail chains in Poland have requested their suppliers to label collective and logistics packaging with barcodes in accordance with the global EAN.UCC system, and given the observed increased interest in this topic, several basic principles in this regard are presented below.
Each trade unit that differs from another from the perspective of the manufacturer, distributor, and final customer should be marked with a separate Global Trade Item Number (GTIN): EAN/UCC-8, EAN/UCC-13, UCC-12, or EAN/UCC-14. This also applies to groupings of trade units that are also trade units themselves, i.e., their collective packaging (shrink-wrapped packs, foil-wrapped trays, crates with bottles, cartons, pallets, etc.).
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 2002/1.