Because of labeling, ice cream manufacturers had to increase the number of staff by 10-20% - Natalia Utkina

We remind that mandatory digital labeling of cheeses and ice cream has begun since June 1. In the first week of its launch, many representatives of the dairy industry complained about problems in the "Honest mark" system.

According to Natalia Utkina, the main reason for the difficulty of introducing ice cream labeling during the peak of the high season is lack of technological solutions for applying and reading codes from the product, especially for high-performance lines. 

‘The unpreparedness of printing houses to work with variable data and the lack of aggregated typographic codes have caused great damage to ice cream companies. The short time frame for the introduction of mandatory labeling in the context of a pandemic and the associated problems of equipment delivery with high demand - all this has had a negative impact on the ice cream industry,’ the expert stressed.

She added that a month after the start of the mandatory digital labeling of ice cream, we can say that manufacturers started the process. At the same time, Natalia Utkina said that under the current conditions, enterprises were forced to increase the number of employees by about 10-20%, since labeling, according to her, "added the amount of manual labor."

According to Natalia Utkina, the problems associated with labeling lead to a decrease in labor productivity and production efficiency, and therefore many enterprises have not reached their production capacity yet because of commissioning.

‘The main problem, lack of a technological technical solution for digital labeling of ice cream on high-performance lines, has not been solved. Printing codes in a printing house and their aggregation is also a problem. In addition, ice cream manufacturers have to print codes themselves, spend a lot of time setting up equipment when the line stops or switching from one type of ice cream to another,’ the expert noted.

She also said that enterprises still need a lot of time to fix errors in the software for digital labeling of ice cream and to get a response from the technical support of the "Honest mark" sytem.

‘While working with digital labeling, manufacturers have new questions that, of course, will be solved over time. However, introduction of labeling for ice cream in the summer has created big problems for manufacturers. Ice cream makers are still being rescued by the created stock balances, which are 10-12% more than last year. The Union of Ice Cream Makers of Russia hopes that by the next season, ice cream producers will adapt to labeling and will be able to work more efficiently than this year,’ Natalia Utkina emphasized.

The expert noted that because of the introduction of mandatory digital labeling, ice cream makers face serious costs associated with purchasing of equipment, software, commissioning, staff increase, purchasing and printing of labeling codes.

‘Direct costs for one package of ice cream increased by more than 1 ruble only because of the cost of the code and the cost of its application. It is impossible to shift all the costs to the consumer by raising prices – ice cream will become very expensive and it will not be bought. So ice cream makers have to cover most of the labeling costs themselves. And I would like to note once again that all working industrial ice cream manufacturers label their products,’ summed up Natalia Utkina.

Read the latest news on The DairyNews telegram channel