Alcohol Stickers Will Be Outdated Again
The alcohol market faces another epic relabeling. The Russian State Duma yesterday passed the first reading of a draft law that would require a new excise stamp on the neck of bottles, with a security seal and barcode for the state alcohol tracking system (known under its Russian abbreviation EGIAS), beginning January 1, 2009. It took a year and a half to relabel bottles the last time it was necessary. That process ended in July of this year, after scandals, shortages and confusion.
The seal on the label is to confirm that the bottle has not been opened. Thus bottles will not be able to be reused with the same stickers attached. The labeling system is not new. Rather, it is a return to the system that was in place until the beginning of 2006, when the EGIAS system was instituted and stickers containing the information for it began to be attached to the sides of bottles. Alcohol producers received the new stickers only in March, causing long shortages of alcoholic beverages in Russian stores. There were also numerous delays due to other technical causes.
Industry spokesmen are displeased. Dmitry Dobrov, press secretary of the Union of Alcoholic Products Producers, expressed the organizations opposition to the new law, the need to lower the excise on alcohol. Sergey Velichko, marketing director for Khortitsa, complained that the equipment to apply the labels costs $50,000 per bottling line. Duma member Yury Medvedev pointed out, however, that many producers may have saved the equipment they used before 2006.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 17, 2007
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Photo: Dmitry Lebedev
