Taxonomy/Businesses
Introduction
The businesses taxonomy describes the businesses as found on product packaging. It is legally required to have the name, and contact information, of the business of the packaging. For some products it is also necessary to indicate the production of processing business. Beside these legal obligation one often finds other business names as well.
Need to add some examples here
Note that this is different from brands, which are listed in the Brands taxonomy. Brands only function as a product (range) identifier and do not say anything about who is behind the brand in terms of owner ship, distribution or manufacture.
The business taxonomy is also different from the Stores taxonomy, which describes the names (and logo's) by which a store can be identified.
Current situation
At the moment there is only limited support for businesses on OFF and specifically on products. There are several fields that are related to businesses.
- Brands field - these are the identifiers for multiple products (product line). The brands are related to businesses as they are owned and distributed by a business;
- Stores field - currently this is interpreted as the identifier of the store, i.e. the brand. This can be the name of a chain of stores or just a single individual store;
- Traceability code field - these are codes that are mandatory in the EU (like
NL 534 EG) and specific countries. It is also used for other codes (fishing, ...). These code can all be traced back to a business. It is possible that the business is also written explicitly on the packaging, but mostly one only sees the codes; - Manufacturing or processing places field - this is a free field intended to have the location in free form of the producer.
- Link to the product page on the official site of the producer field - a link to the product on a website. This might be the website of the brand, the producer or the distributor. So this is also an indirect reference to a business;
Examples
Some examples of packaging that have businesses on them.
Comté
This comté has multiple businesses mentioned on its packaging:
- Fromageries Vagne - probably where the cheese was ripened. Located in Poligny. This is also the brand name;
- Service consommateur - is this another business as the location is in another town (Bondoufle)?;
- FR 25.039.003 - this code is of the Societé Affineurs Franc-Comtois Reunis in Avoudrey. What is their role?;
Goal
The basic goal is to have the ability to register all references to businesses found on packaging. Mostly these will be businesses that are responsible for customer contact, but there might be more than one business mentioned.
Business
A business is a legal entity and will be registered in a single country. It will have an official registration number for that country (NL: KvK-number, FR: numéro Siret). A business will have a geographic location where the headquarters are located. And there will be multiple ways to contact the business, i.e. by post (direct, PO Box, Freepost), by mail, through Internet, Facebook, etc.
Wikidata
There are many places where one finds information on businesses. The most relevant to OFF is Wikidata. Many businesses are already there with more information than is available on packages.
Adding businesses
If a business is not yet on Wikidata, one can add it there. A new Wikidata item should be an instance of a business. It is best to use the business name as it appears on the packaging. For instance: Lidl Nederland GmbH.
Warning: a business might seem to be already on WIkidata, but is listed for a different country. Thus Lidl has a business in each country it operates, like Lidl Österreich or Lidl Poland.
Extending businesses
Once a business entry is available on Wikidata, it can be extended based on information found on the packaging. The following information can be available and needs to be added as statements:
- industry - enter food industry or beverage industry as value;
- country - to specify where the country is legally based;
- headquarters - the town where the headquarters are located. To this the qualifiers postal code, located on street and house number can be added. The latter is sometimes to restrictive and one has to add street address;
- location - instead of using headquarters it is more prudent to add location instead as we can not be sure it is a headquarter, but a point of customer service (has use);
- post office box - the number of the post office box. The location and postal code can be added as qualifiers;
- freepost - the number of the freepost box. The location and postal code can be added as qualifiers. The qualifier part of with the value Freepost is required;
- official website - the website of the business;
- email address - with prefix mailto:, A referemce is requested, which can be the link to the product on OFF;
- phone number - a phone number found on the packaging. Must be in format +ccnnnnnnn;
- qualifier has use with value customer service;
- legal form - sometime this can be deducted from the business name and will depend on the country:
- DE: KG - Kommanditgesellschaft ;
- ES: S.L. - sociedad limitada;
- FR: S.A. - société anonyme;
- FR: SAS - société par actions simplifiée;
- NL: B.V. - besloten vennootschap;
- SE: AB - aktiebolag;
- TR: A.Ş. - Anonim Şirket;
It is tempting to add other statements, like parent organisation or links between the various organisations on the packaging, but that can be done at a later stage, when we know more.
Questions
- What is TSA (France) and can it be added to Wikidata?
- Can Cedex (France) added?
- Products might indicate that there is a social media account by showing the logo of facebook. Only by searching the business on Facebook one can retrieve the id of the business used on Facebook;
- Product group - is it useful to add the product group/category the business is involved in?
- Business role - how can the business role be expressed on wikidata? The following roles can be found on the packaging:
- Distributor - the company that distributes the goods of producers in specific countries
- Importer - can we specify which area they distribute to?
- Brand specific website/email - this cannot be put under a brand, as a brand is not an organisation. As child organization/unit?
- How do I specify toll-free phone numbers?
- it is possible to set a business as an instance of distributor. Is it then still part of the food industry?
- Sometimes there are mail addresses/web sites/postal addresses that are not linked to a business. How could we encode these? (example)
Value chain
The value chain of a product is defined by all processes that happend to the life of a product, from ingredients to a product in the hand of a consumer. All businesses involved in this life will add value to the product. This can start with a farmer, a fisher to those that initially treat these ingredients, to shippers or transporters, to storage, packagers and repackagers, distributors and sales. But also the businesses that check quality, certify processes, etc. Each business involved will add a cost and thus value.
Looking at packaging it will be clear that only few of the involved businesses are known. However knowing this chain will indicate the environmental impact of a product.
Business roles
The roles of some businesses can be found on the product or inferred. The following roles have been found:
- distributor - the distributors main role is to distribute the product to the sales locations. The distributor role is a legal requirement. It is the business that has to provide the contact with the producer;
- exporter
- importer
- producer - the producer transforms the ingredients to the final product. There might occur repackaging at a later stage in the chain;
Examples
What businesses are displayed on a product depends on the choices of the distributor (?). Some examples:
| product | role(s)
(explicit / implicit) |
image | comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haricots blancs |
|
![]() |
|
| Chipos |
|
also producer? | |
| Jalapenos |
|
exporter to EU | |
| Jackfruit |
|
producer in Thailand | |
| Sesame seed oil |
|
Tang puts a french language label on the bottles |
Implementation
Taxonomy
The business taxonomy is implemented in the same way as the other taxonomies.
Entries
An entry in the taxonomy will look like:
xx: Mondelez España Commercial S.L.
comment:en: consumer contact Spain
wikidata:en: Q137439458
It might be necessary to add additional properties at a later stage.
Parents
An entry might be preceded by a parent link. This is necessary in case of ambiguity. For instance if a user enters the business General Mills, which business is meant. It can be the business in any country as this is a worldwide conglomerate. On the packaging might find multiple businesses per country, as each business is locally responsable.

The implementation would then look like:
xx: General Mills
< xx: General Mills
xx: General Mills International Sarl, General Mills International Sarl (Switzerland)
wikidata:en: Q137731193
This approach can also be used for businesses that have on relationship, but just happen to have the same name.
Products
Information on businesses should be added to the products. To be able to add this a field is necessary. There are multiple possibilities:
- NEW Business field - add a business field where multiple businesses can be added. There will be some overlap with other fields. A drawback of a generic field is that the role of the business is not explicit;
- Manufacturing or processing places - this is used to indicate the manufacturer. Mainly used when there is no traceability code on the packaging. This is free field, so one can find the business name, county and address. This field could transform to a business field;
- Traceability code - these codes (mainly EU and France) are a pointer to a business, which is part of the value chain. Usually this is the final(?) packager or processor of the product before it reaches the customer. It does not have to be the manufacturer. This business might be indicated in full as well;
- Stores - currently this used as the brand of the store (chain) where the consumer buys the product;
- Brands - sometimes the business name will be the same as a brand name. These two are however essentially two different things, so there is no overlap. There is a relation between the two concepts;
Inferring data
Once the businesses are known, it is possible to infer other data relevant to OFF. This can be used to fill in missing data or check on already existing data. It might be necessary to add additional adjectives to entries in the business taxonomy. An overview of what can and cannot be done when the business is known:
- Brands - most businesses are responsible for specific brands. This could be used as quality check on brand-business combinations;
- Countries - the distributor business will predict in which country the distributor is active and thus where the product is sold;
Bootstrap
Much information can be added from the existing lists of business codes (?) that already exist. Most of these are however not yet in wikidata.
Usage examples
- Location - the location of one or more businesses can be retrieved as follows:
- Look up the business in the taxonomy;
- Retrieve the wikidata identifier of the business;
- Retrieve the country, headquarters of the business on wikidata;
- Use it on OFF-related sites;
- Customer contact - either a postal address (location, post office box (freepost)), a web-page, phone number email address);
For these usages a Sparql-query should be defined to retrieve this information.
Questions
- Synonyms - are these needed? We could add the codes as synonyms and replace them with business (code). For instance FR 09.167.001 UE will translate to SARL JPS Lait (FR 09.167.001 UE).
- A package might add customer service nummer, but the business is not mentioned. The brand or the business behind the brand (if known) might be used instead.





