Spirits producers in Europe have successfully delivered on a first milestone commitment to provide energy information on the label.
According to a progress report released by trade association spiritsEUROPE, the sector succeeded in ensuring that around 1 in 4 bottles already featured such information by the end of 2020. This share that is set to rise to 50% and 66% by the end of 2021 and 2022 respectively.
In addition, the sector also reported on progress in developing digital consumer information tools.
Voluntary Agreement
The targets are part of a long-running voluntary agreement – the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Consumer Information – that was facilitated by the European Commission in 2019.
The MoU provides clear guidance on how nutrition information and ingredient listings should be made available to consumers on the packaging of spirit drinks, given they are not mandatory under current EU rules.
Commenting on the progress, Christian Porta, president of spiritsEUROPE, said, “Despite the difficult market environment and tremendous challenges presented by the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, we are proud to report that the sector is on track in delivering on our labelling commitments and providing European consumers with the information they are looking for.”
“Since 2019, more and more trade associations have signed up to the MoU, and more and more producers have started to roll out labels in line with its commitments. This shows that the approach is working,” Porta added.
Digital Consumer Information
The spirit drink producers also achieved progress in key initiatives to provide digital consumer information.
The spirits sector has teamed up with the wine sector to invest in the development of a bespoke platform that will generate product-specific e-labels that will be directly accessible from a bottle by scanning a QR code.
The platform will be piloted later this year, with the ambition of rolling out the initiative after.
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine. Article by Conor Farrelly. For more Drinks news, click here. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
