The Ministry of Industry and Trade proposed the government to approve new terms for labeling beer

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has prepared a draft law on beer labeling, according to which it will become mandatory for beer in kegs from April 1, 2023, for beer in glass or polymer packaging – from October 1, 2023, and for beer in aluminum containers – from January 15, 2024 .Document published on the portal of projects of normative legal acts.

The Government Decree “On the Approval of Beer Labeling Rules” will establish that producers will have to ensure the labeling process no later than seven days from the start of work. Producers in remote hard-to-reach areas will be allowed to register in the monitoring information system within 30 days.

The labeling of beer and beer drinks in Russia was supposed to be launched from September 1, 2022, but Russian President Vladimir Putin extended the experiments that had begun and postponed the start of those that had not yet been launched for a year.

The beer labeling experiment has been underway since 2021. To start mandatory labeling within the specified timeframe The Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Center for the Development of Advanced Technologies (TsRPT, labeling operator) and the Association of Beer Producers (unites transnational brewing companies Heineken, AB InBev Efes and Baltika) agreed at the end of July. As Vyacheslav Mamontov, executive director of the association, noted, “this is a compromise solution that suits the brewing industry,” and “the parties have developed a consolidated position on a unified approach to introducing labeling for the entire brewing industry, regardless of the size of producers.”

“Opora Rossii” opposes such terms for the introduction of labeling of brewing products, since the experiment has been going on for a year and a half, but no results have been summed up, as well as discussions with the entire industry, emphasizes Alexei Nebolsin, a member of the presidium of the board of this public organization. He recalls that today a number of technical problems remain unresolved, in particular, the labeling of kegs “inseparable from the container”, two thirds of which are reused, the impossibility of labeling aluminum cans on high-speed lines, etc.). “We were not convinced of the need to introduce labeling, we believe that it is being imposed unreasonably, instead of extending the EGAIS system to retail sales of draft beer, as the members of the working group on the regulatory guillotine demanded,” Nebolsin said. He says that Opora Rossii, together with the Union of Russian Brewers (SRP), will continue to fight for the postponement and cancellation of labeling.

The Union of Russian Brewers (PSA) believes that the problem with the gray market could be solved by extending the EGAIS system to beer retail sales after wholesale, but this provision disappeared after the first reading of the draft law on the register of brewers. “We are convinced that this novel was excluded in order to argue the need for beer labeling. But these costs will amount to billions of rubles for the industry and jeopardize the stable operation of enterprises,” Daniil Briman, chairman of the PSA board, said earlier.

July 12 PSA wrote an open letter to the President, in which he opposed the introduction of labeling “because it paralyzes the work of the brewing industry.” According to the brewers, the federal executive authorities are ignoring their arguments. “This decision will have an extremely negative effect: the production of beer in the Russian Federation will be reduced by 20–30% with a proportional reduction in excise duties, the cost of brewing products will increase by more than 10%.,” the open letter says.

The position of the union has not changed, the representative of the union confirmed to Vedomosti.