Expiry Date

The expiry date (or use-by date) is the hard cutoff after which a food product is deemed unsafe for consumption. Under FSSAI regulations, it is mandatory on all pre-packaged foods with a shelf life of less than 18 months. Beyond this date, the product must be pulled from shelves, cannot legally be sold, and must be destroyed or returned. Selling expired food attracts FSSAI penalties and potential criminal prosecution.

In Indian distribution, expiry management is a daily operational challenge. A dairy distributor handling 100+ SKUs with shelf lives ranging from 2 days (fresh milk) to 6 months (UHT) must track thousands of batch-level expiry dates simultaneously. Without system-level tracking, near-expiry stock gets buried behind fresh arrivals, expires in the godown, and becomes a dead loss. FEFO (First Expiry, First Out) discipline is the antidote, but it requires batch-level visibility that only digital systems provide.

Advanced distribution platforms set configurable alerts, for example, flagging dairy products at 50% shelf life consumed so the sales team can push them through trade schemes before they become deadstock. Sales analytics dashboards track expiry-related write-offs as a percentage of revenue, a metric every distributor should obsess over.