THE FOOD LABELLING BUSINESS

The new century brings food labelling a new challenge: the growing market demand for specialized food labelling. Historically the food labelling business has dealt with what producers found suitable. Nowadays special needs from special consumers become bigger, claiming more and more from what they buy. Food labelling also has to cope with this growing commercial trend. Additionally former unattended consumer minorities now represent an important share of the buying public. Food labelling is meeting with such things as Braille lettering for blind people, or bigger printing fonts for senior citizens. They expect the food labelling to provide them with not only the brand’s name, but also information such as nutrition facts and other. Thankfully the food labelling industry has modern technology to face these new requirements, using techniques and materials previously unheard of.

It doesn’t end there; food labelling is expected to provide all useful data in the language used by the consumers. Also food labelling must comply with local legal requirements and boundaries. Now even high fines are expected if food labelling doesn’t fit the consumer protection laws. With common Occidental culture needs and languages, food labelling has no problems, but that’s not always the case. Arabic and Oriental cultures, among others, have a high demand on Western-made products and their food labelling. Sometimes even religious issues give a hard day to food labelling, forcing producers to specify certain products´ characteristics to avoid any moral, ethical and religious trespassing. The idea for a successful business is to give the costumer what he wants, no matter what. Sometimes, due to these cultural differences, the food labelling of any same given product is very different regarding where it is sold. Packing must always meet all the requirements of the user, and advertising, along with the food labelling attractive to the public.