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What started as a humble beginning in the basement of a Penticton home, has grown into a barcode company that can trace product origins from across the planet.

What makes IBC, International Bar Coding, located in Penticton, unique is its ability to create traceable barcodes so retailers can track all the details of a product, said Matt Pedersen, business development manager with IBC.

The idea was launched inside president and founder Chris Pedersen’s basement in 1993 and has developed into a company that has barcodes and labels on products around the world.

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“The business started from a need to help producers getting products ready for retail and we initially started in the forestry side and then we’ve been able to expand into quite a few different industries,” Matt said.

The barcodes found locally and internationally, unveil all the nitty-gritty details of a product. For example, an IBC barcode on a bottle of wine can tell where the grapes came from, who harvested them, what tanks that they went into and what went into them to create the finished product, Matt said.

IBC barcodes can be found on a variety of products from fruit, lumber, alcohol, cans, bottles, cases and even marijuana packaging.

“People want to know where their products are and customers want to know where the products came from and there’s honesty in being able to say here’s the automatic data,” Matt said.

With a tracing system, they can track individual items and cases and with this system if there’s ever a recall producers may only have to recall a certain box or batch rather than the entire product, he said.

A majority of IBC customers are located across North American, South America and Asia, but Matt said he thinks there’s more opportunitie to provide labelling and barcoding solutions for consumer-packaged goods, and industrial manufactures overseas.

In August, IBC will be moving to a new 13,000 square foot facility within the Penticton Indian Band, behind the Nissan dealership, Matt said, which is an upgrade from their current location which has a 2,000 square foot building with a 1,000 square foot trailer on Barnes Street.

“So we not only provide the labels with barcodes on them, but we can also include the machinery, the equipment that’s required to apply the labels to the products,” he said.

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