The Southern Dairy Union has asked the Government to postpone the introduction of milk labeling until January 2022

As explained in the Union, even if the enterprises manage to overcome these problems, the growth of the cost of dairy products predicted by the participants in the process will be at least 10-15%.

‘Participants in the dairy market in the South of Russia are actively preparing for the upcoming introduction of mandatory digital labeling, but as practice has shown, the vast majority of enterprises experience serious technical difficulties in implementing labeling, which do not allow enterprises to be ready for the deadlines set by the Government. It is rightly noted that the summer months are the beginning of the season for production and sales of the main batches of ice cream volumes and during this period it is extremely difficult, and sometimes it is not possible to organize a full-fledged process of carrying out all the necessary installation, commissioning, service and other work in the production due to its full load,’ says the message of the industry association.

Excerpt from the letter of the Southern Dairy Union to the Government of the Russian Federation: ‘...Most enterprises have chosen the typographic method of applying labeling codes. At the moment, the printing houses used cannot place commercial orders in full and in accordance with planned purchases, which is a potential problem of the inability to obtain packaging film in time before the start of mandatory labeling of ice cream.

In February 2021, the dairy product labeling working group defined a method for scanning the roll aggregation code, or scanning the first and last marking code in a roll, for a typographic application method for multi-threaded production lines. At the moment, only one printing house can work with this method, the rest give vague answers on the use of this method.

When conducting an experiment on the typographic method of applying labeling codes, together with the Operator-CATD and the integrator company, a file of information about the labeling codes applied in the printing house was provided, and during the working meetings on labeling at the presentation, it was said that the manufacturer would receive full information about the codes applied to the packaging. At the moment, no feedback from the printing houses in the form of a file with full information about the applied codes is provided, which does not exclude errors when accepting the packaging film, errors when applying the labeling code to the printing houses (they may confuse the product bar code and apply it to the wrong product), errors when reading the packaging film on the production line. Enterprises will pay for the labeling code and would like to see it in its entirety, including the labeling code and the converted identification tool. Under the contract with Operator-CATD, enterprises must remove the crypto part only after submitting their application report, but with the typographic method of application, enterprises do not have any codes in the accounting system at all. The deadlines for printing the packaging of necessary assortment no longer allow us to make it in time until June 01, 2021.

When applied in-house, manufacturers need to equip their lines with equipment for printing and reading codes. The equipment is mainly imported and there are delays in delivery due to the pandemic situation. This also creates problems with the launch on June 01, 2021.

There are no specific requirements and conditions for the withdrawal of labeled finished dairy products for budget organizations. To reduce budget expenditures, we propose to apply automatic disposal of codes after the expiration date of labeled dairy products purchased by budget institutions.

Due to the need to scan each labeling code from individual packaging, the actual speed of production lines used in enterprises is reduced by up to 40%.

There are significant additional and previously unrecorded costs for creating and maintaining jobs, collecting and disposing of usable dairy products with unreadable labels, etc. It is important to note that the measures of state support have not been determined yet.

For an objective assessment of the readiness of the dairy industry to introduce mandatory digital labeling of finished products, among other things, it is important to understand the real degree of readiness of the commodity distribution chain, namely, trade objects, as well as public catering enterprises and facilities that use finished dairy products as ingredients and components (production of confectionery, bakery, culinary products, dumplings, other semi-finished products, etc.). From the analysis conducted by the Southern Dairy Union, it follows that the degree of readiness of these facilities, on the territory of the Southern Federal District and the North Caucasus Federal District, at the end of April 2021 is only about 5%.

... in connection with the above, representatives of the dairy industry of the Southern Federal District and the North Caucasus Federal District of the Russian Federation ask to pay attention to the current situation in the dairy industry of Russia and begin the phased introduction of mandatory digital labeling from January to July 2022.’

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