Packing and labelling: trays, flats, boxes, date, origin, batch

This lesson is part of Table eggs: from nest to customer specialisation. It opens to every registered student, from free registration. Levels 1 to 5 and the tracks remain readable by everyone.

A graded, candled, fresh egg can still be lost in the last ten minutes: a warped tray, a stack too high, a badly closed box, and it arrives cracked. And a perfect egg without any indication is an anonymous egg: the customer does not know where it comes from or when it was laid, and the day they have a doubt, they cannot tell you. Packing is protecting; labelling is informing and being able to trace back. This lesson goes from the cell to the box, sets the information a customer and an inspector expect, builds a simple batch number and shows how the day of 1,800 eggs is arranged into trays and boxes ready to leave.

• ✓Choose and manage trays (pulp, plastic, new, reused) and boxes so that no egg cracks between the room and the customer
• ✓Fill, close and mark a box of 12 trays by the rules
• ✓Write a complete label: farm, Agnibilékrou, contact, lay date, batch, size, number, storage advice
• ✓Build a batch number that allows tracing back to the date, the house and the round

1. Packing is protecting; labelling is informing
2. Trays: pulp or plastic, new or reused
3. The box of 12: fill, close, mark
4. The label: what the customer and the inspector expect
5. The batch number: six digits and a letter that say everything
6. Worked example: the day of 1,800 eggs in trays and boxes
7. The retail carton and the name on the carton
8. Going further

• •Cell = 1 egg; tray = 30; box = 12 trays = 360 eggs (about 22.5 kg); eggs for sale leave on new trays or washed plastic, never on returned trays.
• •Box: 12 complete trays, broad end up, interlocking, an upturned empty tray on top, no gap, closed without forcing, marked on two sides, stacks of 4 in the room and 3 in a vehicle.
• •Label: who (farm), where (Agnibilékrou, contact), when (lay date), what (size), how many (number), how (cool, away from sun and smells), plus the batch; common retail limit reference: 28 days after lay kept cool, shorter at ambient temperature; check the required information with the competent services.
• •Batch = YYMMDD-Hx (-Rx): one per house and per day, written on the tray, the box and the delivery note, with a batch register; it allows tracing back in ten minutes to all the sheets of the day.
• •Every evening: full-price eggs × distribution by size ÷ 30 = trays, ÷ 12 = boxes; that is what tells the seller what to promise and what to order in packaging.