Cracking your Compliance

packaging design compliance

“Eugh, not legal compliance – yawn.“

We hear you. It’s not the most exciting part of your brand journey BUT it’s a critical one you can’t afford to get wrong.

You only have one chance to make that great first impression and when it’s taken you months of hard work to get in front of a retail buyer, you don’t want their reason for turning you away, to be a lack of compliance – and believe me, this happens more than you’d think.

The four key parts to getting your compliance up to scratch are:

1. Create legal recipes 
2. Ensure on-pack claims are legal
3. Know what has to be declared on your pack
4. Display it on your packaging clearly & legibly

While our expertise lies in how you display it on pack, for the what, we partner with the
brilliant product development experts at Froghop.

So, here are our collective top tips to cracking your compliance:

1. Are you Legal?

By law, all prepacked food must display certain mandatory information – and yes, there’s a lot to fit in…

  • Legal name of food
    List of ingredients
    Allergen information
    Quantitative declaration of ingredients (QUIDS)
    Net quantity
    Storage conditions and date labelling
    Name and address of manufacturer
    Country of origin
    Preparation instructions
    Nutritional declaration including product-specific requirements
    Health claims

There’s also dietary information to consider such as whether your product is suitable for vegans or vegetarians, PLUS, if your product contains caffeine or alcohol there’s even more legislation to include.

2. Confirm your Health Claims

There’s a strong trend at the moment for products to have added benefits and associated health claims.

Whether your product aids gut health, immunity or brain focus, to make these claims they need to be on the ‘Great Britain nutrition and health claims register’ and you have to prove you match required legal levels to meet the claim, by conducting specific vitamin or mineral tests in a lab.

This process can be time consuming, so start with these checks as early as you can.

3. How Long does it Last?

Before you sell to consumers, it’s essential to understand if your product is safe to consume, and to ensure quality of taste throughout its shelf life.

Thorough shelf life testing will include microbiological tests which analyse the growth of pathogens, as well as sensory tests which review changes to taste and texture over time.

The sales channel you’re using determines how long a shelf-life you need. For example, a pretty quick D2C sales journey is sustainable with a shorter shelf-life, whereas if you’re talking to a larger retailer where your product needs to be transported around the country, and likely stored for weeks before even making it onto the shelves, you’ll need to prove a minimum of 6mths-12mths shelf life.

4. Understanding Allergens

Clear labelling ensures that consumers with food allergies can easily identify potential risks, fostering trust and loyalty in your brand.

There are currently 14 allergens to be declared – and this is constantly in review, so keep up with the latest FSA (Food Standards Agency) advice.

5. Looking Good

Once you have all the legal content, you need to display it on your packaging, following legal requirements. All mandatory information must…

  • Be easy to find on pack
    Clearly be legible
    Not be hidden, obscured or detracted from
    Should not require consumers to open the product to access the information

But of course, this doesn’t mean it can’t also look good – our team are constantly finding new creative ways to design compliance into a brand’s packaging.

While you might not want compliance at the top of your to do list, the truth is, without it you won’t have a sellable product.

Partnering with experts not only ensures that nothing gets missed (and those retail buyers will have nothing to push back on) but it also means your time can be spent doing what you do best – building your brand!

Join us…

We’re helping more brands launch, grow and thrive through sharing the why and the how, sprinkled with a little creativity to inspire you. If you want to elevate your brand and really engage your audience, then this is the place to be!

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