GS1 standards makes it possible for the alcoholic beverage industry to identify, capture, and share information about products, parcels, and locations throughout the value chain. They can also be used to trace products and deliveries, contributing to higher customer benefits and consumer safety.
GS1 standards in the beverage industry
When a supplier and buyer use the same business language to communicate about products, the supply chain becomes efficient, safe and sustainable. Therefore, the alcoholic beverage industry in Sweden has chosen to use GS1 standards.
GS1 standards for identification and capturing were initially used to read bottles and cans labeled with a barcode. In this way, business partners and consumers were able to obtain accurate and reliable information about the beverages. Later, the use was extended to include outer packaging and pallets. In this way, the industry got a more efficient warehousing, logistics and reduced out of stock.
When standards for identification and capturing are in place, the industry can achieve traceability throughout the supply chain. GS1 has developed a model of traceability for wine that is scalable from the largest winemakers down to the smallest grower. You can find it in the sidebar.
Standards in use
The most common standards in the beverage industry are GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) for identification of products and outer packaging, SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code) for pallets and GLN (Global Location Numerb) for locations. You will need the standards to label the product, packaging or pallet in the next step with barcodes such as EAN-13, ITF-14 and GS1-128.
To share information received by the retailer, the Validoo service is widely used to help companies comply with GS1 standards when filling out, managing, and sharing product information.
Systembolaget’s guidelines for alcoholic beverages
You who sell products at Systembolaget need to follow new supplementary guidelines and requirements for standardized image style of product images, which you can read about in our latest specification.
Be a part of the development
At GS1 our standards are developed and maintained together with our customers. In our user groups you can be involved and influence our standards and processes. The groups are available at both national and international level and give us insight on how we can improve, mean while our participants are inspired, get an increased knowledge and a broader understanding of how our standards work.
Currently, the user group for alcoholic beverages in Sweden is not active, but if you are active in the beverage industry and want to participate in taking GS1 standards, solutions and services into the future, you are most welcome to send an expression of interest.