Labelling after Brexit

Wines and spirits labelling post-Brexit

By David Richardson, Regulatory & Commercial Affairs Director, WSTA

New and changing labelling rules following the Brexit transition can be difficult to navigate for wine and spirits businesses based in the UK.

“That must be good – it’s 15%!” exclaimed a customer in the wine aisle of my local supermarket. I guess it is obvious which bit of the packaging mattered most to them.

For marketing departments, packaging is so much more than that. Producers need to project an image of their product through its label and supporting promotional material. At the same time, their compliance team must act as goalkeepers to make sure that mandatory and voluntary particulars are correct for each of the markets where the product will be sold.

As one business explained to me, there is a “good” label – that has all the information that the marketing department wants, as long as it isn’t misleading – and a “bad” label – that has all the information that must be there and in the correct format. Added to that, there are rules about font size and the placement of certain items of information in the same field of vision, as well as sectorspecific rules for wines compared to spirits.

EU rules post-Brexit Now that the Brexit transition period has ended, relatively little has so far changed. Whilst that may appear to be good news, some things have changed and further changes coming down the track need to be considered now, as products are made, bottled and labelled in advance of release dates.

If the label on products placed on the UK market before 30 September 2022 and sold to exhaustion after that complies with EU rules, then it is acceptable for the UK market.

However, the same is not true for UK products going to the EU. From 1 January 2021, these have had to comply with EU labelling rules. For elements such as the abv, nominal volume and name, this is fairly simple. The difficulty has been to identify an EU Food Business Operator or EU importer. This has meant that UK exporters have had to set up a business in the EU or work in a different way with existing EU partners, to identify an appropriate address.

Wine labelling The rule will also apply to products placed on the UK market after 30 September 2022. This is less of a problem for sprits, made wines (eg fruit fusion products) and RTDs, where arrangements can mirror those for GB > EU exports, but might be a problem for wine importers. The rule for wine is more restrictive in that, as framed, the importer shown on the label is required to be the business that acts as the declarant on the customs import declaration. That is a problem now for businesses ordering labels for stock that will not come to the UK until Q3 2022. Which importer do they show? They may not know today the Incoterms (international commercial terms) that will apply at the point of import, so cannot identify the importer when ordering labels. If a product is coming to the UK under multiple contracts, there could be multiple importers, so in theory each importer would need their own label.

The WSTA is asking the government to look again at the wine rules and adopt a more flexible position. That does not solve the immediate problem, however, so we hope that trading standards authorities will show flexibility where importers have done their best in an uncertain and evolving situation.

Challenges for spirits But spirits don’t get off unscathed. A particular quirk of Brexit is that the new EU Spirits Drinks Regulation 2019/787 has not been rolled over into UK law. This means that products on the GB market must still adhere to the previous Reg 110/2008 and subsidiary legislation, whereas products in the EU and NI are covered by the new rules.

Although the two sets of rules are very similar, they are not the same. The main differences are around the amount of sugar that can be used for rounding off (less generous in the EU); the use of the word ‘dry’ (more generous in the EU), and how allusions to spirits drinks categories are presented, in particular, the font size. There is also a transitional retrospective amendment that relaxes the allusion rules for the EU market.

And then there are voluntary particulars. These are things like health warnings and advice about alcohol units (8g to a unit in the UK, but 10g in the EU). Even before Brexit, these could change from country to country, so producers need to make sure that they add the correct voluntary details to labels that are now more market specific than ever.

Finding new strategies Finally, moving goods to, from and through Northern Ireland represents another level of challenge. I’m not considering the challenges around customs processes and potential liability to EU tariffs for goods that might be ‘at risk’ of moving to the EU. Just on labelling, labels for NI need to

be compliant with EU legislation. Spirits products that need a UK duty stamp still need that for NI, and the stamp would have to be obliterated to move those products out of NI.

The WSTA is working hard on two fronts. First, we are working with our members to ensure they understand the new rules and have strategies to deal with them. Secondly, we are using our extensive government network to try to persuade officials and ministers that we now have the opportunity to make some good choices about which rules the UK can simplify and which we choose to align with the EU.