Service
Label Compliance
Artwork is the most common reason a first shipment sits at the border, and the cheapest problem to avoid. Every country decides what has to appear on the pack and in which language, and in some markets the artwork is approved as part of the registration. Printing before you know the answer means printing twice, and on retail cartons that is not a small number.
What’s included
- A particular-by-particular review of your artwork against the destination requirements
- Identification of what must be added, removed, or expressed differently
- Guidance on language requirements and whether a secondary label is acceptable or a full redesign is needed
- Nutrition and claims review, including claims that are permitted in Canada but not in the destination
- A marked-up version of your artwork showing what changes and why
- Re-review of the corrected artwork before you commit to a print run
What you actually receive
A worked example, free to download and nothing to fill in first. The company in it is invented and says so on its own cover. The costs and requirements are real ones for real markets, so what you see is what this service produces for a product of your own.
PDF · 3 pages · illustrative
Frozen pork artwork reviewed for Vietnam and Singapore
A particular-by-particular review of two formats against two markets, and the one finding that turns a container around: the foodservice case carries no expiry date, which in Vietnam is a condition of entry, not a labelling preference. Shows the marked-up table, why Singapore is the opposite shape of problem, and which corrections are artwork and which are plant.
Download the sample
Who else you will need
These sit next to this engagement and we do not do them. They are licensed or credentialed work, and we would do them worse than the people who do them all day.
We will introduce you, and coordinate across them so nothing falls in a gap.
- Reformulation and ingredient approvals
- A food technologist or regulatory scientist. Where a destination will not accept an additive or a claim, changing the formula is their work rather than a labelling question.
- Translation and artwork production
- Your designer and a certified translator. We mark up what has to change and re-review what comes back to you.
Commercial terms
- Fee range
- Scoped per engagement
- Typical timeline
- Confirmed at scoping
Questions
- Can we just apply a sticker in-market?
- Sometimes, and it depends on the destination and on which particulars are affected. Where a secondary label is accepted it is usually the cheaper route. Where the requirement touches the principal display panel, or where artwork forms part of an approved registration, a sticker will not solve it.
- We already sell this product in another export market. Does that help?
- It helps with the work but it does not answer the question. Requirements differ market by market, and an artwork approved in one destination frequently fails another on language, on nutrition format, or on a claim that is permitted in one place and not the next.
- When should we do this: before or after registration?
- Before you print, and in the markets where artwork forms part of the registration, before the file is submitted. Doing it after registration converts a design change into a regulatory amendment.
- Do you design the artwork?
- No. We tell your designer exactly what has to change and why, in a marked-up form they can work from, and we re-review what comes back. Keeping design with your team keeps your brand consistent.
Read before you brief us
The reasoning behind this work, written out in full and free to read. You will brief us better for having read it, and you may decide you do not need us for part of it.
- Why maple is more than pancake syrup
Bulk and retail maple share one tariff line and are two completely different businesses. The customs schedule cannot tell them apart; the regulator, the buyer and your margin all can, and choosing which one you are in is the decision that sets everything else.
- Canadian private-label products for premium grocery retailers
Private label removes the hardest part of exporting a brand and adds a question most producers never think about: when the pack carries the retailer name and the registration sits with an importer, what exactly do you own?
- What halal certification certifies, and what it does not
A halal certificate attests to an audit. It does not attest to market access, and nothing on the certificate tells you whether the destination accepts the body that issued it. For an exporter those are two different documents that happen to look like one.
- The halal logo: who owns it, who may print it, and when artwork can be finalised
Halal marking is not a badge you add to a design. Two of the three markets put specific obligations on the pack, one of them requires a number that does not exist until somebody else has filed for it, and getting the order wrong means reprinting.
- Canadian labelling rules do not travel, and the ones that do are not the ones you expect
An export pack is governed by the destination, not by the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations. But Canada does not release you entirely, the destination adds requirements Canada has no equivalent for, and the gap between the two is where artwork budgets die.
- Two official languages at home, a third at the border: label language for exporters
Canada mandates English and French, permits other languages around them, and forbids them inside the Nutrition Facts table. Export destinations impose their own language on the same panel. Fitting all of it is a design constraint before it is a compliance one.
- Allergen labelling for export: the list is not the same list
Every market requires allergens to be declared and no two agree on which ones. A pack built to Canada’s priority allergen list is not thereby compliant anywhere else, and the differences are in the direction that matters: things declared elsewhere that Canada does not name.
- Nutrition labelling for export: the table you have is the wrong table
The Nutrition Facts table is a Canadian instrument with a prescribed format, a closed language rule and a set of reference amounts that exist nowhere else. Almost none of it is portable, and the parts that look portable are the ones that mislead.
- Ingredient declarations that fail at a border they were never written for
An ingredient list is assembled under one country’s rules about order, naming, grouping and what may be hidden inside a compound ingredient. Change the country and each of those four rules changes, and none of the changes is visible from the list itself.
- Best before, durable life and the shelf a container spends at sea
Canada leaves the durable life of a product to the company that makes it and requires a date only below ninety days. Export inverts both: the destination often prescribes the shelf life it will accept, and the voyage has already spent some of it.
- Honey is the exception: Canadian labelling rules that follow the export
Most Canadian consumer labelling stops at the border. Honey does not. The grade name is required on the label of all honey that is exported, and the origin marking rules are written in the regulations rather than left to the marketing department.
- Product of Canada, Made in Canada, and the origin nobody asked you about
Origin appears three separate times in an export file, governed by three different sets of rules, and they can legitimately give three different answers. The claim on the pack, the origin on the customs entry and the origin for preference are not the same question.
- The carton is a labelled item, and it is the one the inspector sees first
Every hour of label review goes on the retail pack, which an official may never open. The shipping container carries its own requirements, is printed by a different process, and is where destination markings that have no consumer equivalent actually land.
- Halal for ingredients: the inputs that decide it are the ones on nobody’s list
A halal assessment covers the whole composition, not the declared part. The items that most often fail it are carriers, processing aids and enzymes, which are absent from specification sheets because no other regime asks about them.
- The Philippines: no plant approval, and four ways to lose the container anyway
The Philippines does not vet the Canadian establishment before export, which makes it look like the easiest of the six. The detentions happen at labelling, consignment composition and the annexes instead.
Some of this is already published
This page describes work we would do for you. Part of the answer is written already, read off the regulator and dated, and it costs nothing to check it before you decide whether you need us.
- Vietnam: Vietnamese Food Labelling Requirements Last reviewed 2026-09-18.
- Thailand: Thai Carton Marking for Canadian Meat Last reviewed 2026-09-18.
- Philippines: Philippine Food Labelling Requirements Last reviewed 2026-09-18.
- Indonesia: Indonesian Food Label Particulars and Language Last reviewed 2026-09-19.
- Malaysia: Malaysian Food Label Rules and Pending Changes Last reviewed 2026-09-19.
- Singapore: Singapore Food Labelling Requirements Last reviewed 2026-09-18.