Food packaging and labelling moves from an art to a science
Food labelling accuracy is now a business and brand critical issue – and the food labelling claims you make must be unshakeable.
In the space of a generation or two food supply has evolved beyond measure. What was once predominately about local production for regional markets has transformed into a global industry presiding over a complex web of international supply chains.
Over the same period, governments and consumers have become increasingly attuned to the importance of accurate labelling across all consumer packaged goods, but particularly so for food.
Change has come in waves, especially so in the years since the introduction of the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA). Food Information Regulations followed, and even mandatory calorie labelling. One of the most profound came from the introduction of Natasha’s Law in 2019. It set out to give allergy sufferers more assurance around pre-packed food for direct sale.
When changes in regulation arise, producers must be ready to comply with changes fast. That means being able to implement specific changes, consistently, across large numbers of brands with numerous associated SKUs.
Food labelling claims errors expose food producers to a world of woe
Inaccurate food labelling can cause food producers serious problems ranging from financial penalties and expensive batch recalls to reputational damage.
High profile incidents include the 2013 horse meat scandal and more recent revelations surrounding pork meat mislabelling. Despite allergen labelling regulation, new challenges constantly emerge—such as that experienced by a major coffee chain lambasted for serving a drink tainted with dairy to an allergy sufferer in 2024.
These continue to drive authorities to tighten up on food labelling even further.
Standards bodies now expect food manufacturers to provide an extreme level of transparency when it comes to food labelling claims, as well as greater scrutiny in their food supply chain.
The FSA requires producers to clearly display details such as provenance, ingredients and use by date on the package labelling. There is now an exhaustively long list of things that manufacturers must track and check.
This need for what’s IN the pack to be clearly stated ON the pack—not to mention what the pack is made of— has turned a once design-led art into an exact science.
The only way to control food labelling effectively is to have a single version of the truth.
Tracking your route to total labelling accuracy
Legacy technology, siloed processes and supply chain complexity have left manufacturers starved of swathes of critical data.
Without the systems to manage key product and packaging data in an integrated way, how can any brand be completely confident?
To gain 100% confidence in your labelling, you must have clear insight into every stage of the process. It requires truly transparent and end-to-end transparency across the entire food and packaging process.
As a food producer, your aim must be to reach a point where all labelling claims can be readily substantiated and, where necessary, backed by proven scientific evidence.
This requires you to have systems in place that can enable:
- precision control and granular visibility over every product and packaging development process. This makes project management easier and ensures more informed decision making.
- streamlined workflows and automated quality control processes to enhance consistency in product information, packaging component and artwork management.
- rapid adaptation in line with fast-moving regulatory requirements and compliance standards – including the ability to report against them
- enable product and packaging teams to easily collaborate with colleagues. They will need to communicate with regulatory, technical, packaging, marketing colleagues and supply chain partners to streamline processes, avoid duplication and reduce the risk of human error.
Better user experiences and more effective working
Doing this also helps you create a more productive and better integrated working environment.
This brings numerous benefits for example:
- Delivering transparent and accurate up-to-date data from a single system source means better and faster decision-making, and more productive working.
- Your employees spend less time on repetitive, conflicting or time-consuming tasks like manual administration or filling out spreadsheets and can access key assets more readily when time is at a premium.
- Supply chain partners can be empowered to directly and securely supply data into your systems, making it easier to assure you have all the information you require.
- Studio resources who become engaged at the artworking stage can access the same information and specifications as everyone in your team. Recommended steps for your packaging component management.
Centralisation enables control
The art of accurate packaging and food labelling stems from streamlining workflows and enabling collaboration end-to-end across your business and wider supply chain.
The science is all about having the right data to draw upon in order to create control across them all. Powering your workflows via a centralised platform and solution that is optimised to manage data about food product ingredients, allergens and more and connect seamlessly into your artwork management process is the key to that control.
That way, whenever labelling regulatory change looms, it is possible to make universal change across your product and brand portfolio – and ensure no pack size, special offer edition or flavour variant is missed out.
Centralisation with a solution like 4Pack brings the benefits of:
- A centralised packaging component data and asset repository.
- Powerful instant search, automatic controls, auditable change tracking, and automated reporting.
- Integration of packaging component data with SKU codes and BOM data via ERP integration to ensure data quality validation is checked automatically.
- Component specific templates to build a full and searchable master library of standardised specifications and enable new ones to be automatically compiled into the system.
- Effective internal and supply chain partner collaboration around consistent and shared data, specifications, associated documents/certificates and assets.
- Rapid reporting capabilities by combining packaging and sales data through ERP/BI system integration so that component and SKU level data and volumes can be reported, shared, declared or extracted for informed strategic decision-making.
Your journey to food packaging labelling claims you can stand by
Whichever way you consider this: global supply chains, regulators and changing consumer tastes place mounting pressure on food manufacturers to ensure packaging labelling accuracy.
In the past, errors on packaging have caused not only consumer harms, but real headaches, reputational risks and financial impacts for some food manufacturers.
Streamlining production processes, simplifying data sharing and collaboration between partners both inside and in external design teams can transform things. Bringing data into a singular, fit for purpose system with automated validation both highlights data gaps and conflicts.
Tooling up for good and accurate data management can move you towards 100% certainty that your labelling tells a true and informative story of the journey from farm or plant to plate.
