Introducing the Digital Product Passport for wine e-labeling in 2024
What is the Digital Product Passport?
The European Commission has recently proposed a new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). This regulation aims to make products more sustainable throughout their life cycle, from raw material extraction to disposal.
This new regulation introduced the Digital Product Passport (DPP), a digital file that contains information about a product’s life cycle, including its environmental impact, social impact, and material sourcing. This information can be used to help consumers make more informed purchasing decisions and to help businesses develop more sustainable products.
The ESPR is a significant step forward in the European Commission’s Green Deal, which aims to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 as it aims to help reduce the environmental impact of products and promote sustainable business practices.
What information will the product’s digital passport contain?
The specific information that the digital product passport must contain will vary depending on the product category. For example, the DPP for a food product might include information about its nutritional values and expiration date. The DPP for a clothing product might include information about its care instructions and the country of origin. Here some of the key information that is likely to be included:
- Product identity (unique product identifier, serial number, barcode, etc.)
- Product’s materials and components
- Product’s manufacturing process and supply chain
- Product’s energy consumption and water use
- Product’s waste and emissions
- Product’s reparability and recyclability
To comply with the ESPR, businesses will need to create a DPP for each product they sell in the European Union. The DPP can be created using a variety of tools and platforms, including those provided by the European Commission. Once a DPP has been created, businesses will need to make it available to consumers and businesses. This can be done by including a QR code or other data carrier on the product packaging.
Benefits of the Digital Product Passport in the wine industry
The wine industry has a significant environmental impact, due to factors such as the use of pesticides and herbicides, water consumption, and transportation. The DPP promotes sustainable agriculture in the wine industry by providing consumers with information about provenance and carbon footprint of different wines, starting from grapes cultivation and sourcing, to wine making practices and energy consumption.
Wine e-labeling
For the european wine market, the new wine labelling rule represents an important step towards greater transparency and sustainable farming practices. With the increased consumer demand for product transparency and sustainability, the European Union introduced the new Regulation (EU) 2021/2117 on digital labeling in the wine sector on December 8th 2023. These new rules aim to provide consumers with more comprehensive and accurate information about the wine bottles they purchase, in particular on origin, sustainability, and traceability.
With the new rules, digital wine labels must include the following mandatory information:
- Ingredients list: All bottles of wine must include a list of ingredients, including sulfites. Producers may omit the ingredients list if the wine contains only grapes and yeast.
- Nutritional information: All bottles of wine with more than 1.2% alcohol must include a nutrition label with the calorie content, protein, carbohydrates, and fat.
- Environmental labeling: All bottles of wine must include environmental information about the product, such as the percentage of recycled material and recycling instructions.
The new rules allow wine producers to include all necessary information in a digital label, for example via a QR code generated by dedicated platforms like Deply. This way, consumers can access wine information more easily and faster. A Digital Product Passport registered on blockchain is an even more reliable source of information as the technology ensures data safety and integrity. Here are some examples of how to create a digital label for wine products:
Some wine producers, like the italian winery Angelini Paolo, use web platforms like Deply that generate QR Codes containing the law-compliant information such as ingredients and nutritional values, provenance, traceability and disposal instructions. These are easily accessible to consumers through a smartphone.
Benefits of Deply digital labels
- Greater transparency for consumers: The new rules provide consumers with more complete and accurate information about the wines they purchase. This allows consumers to make more informed and sustainable choices.
- Increased competitiveness for producers: The new rules favor transparency and sustainability, which can be key factors for the competitiveness of quality wine producers.
- Real-time batch management: Before creating a digital label, companies must collect all the mandatory information, such as the list of ingredients, nutritional information, and environmental labelling. This is a complex and labor-intensive process, as the information is often collected manually from paper sheets or Excel files, leading to errors and delays. With digital labels, companies can automate the information collection process. Collaborators, suppliers, and partners can be invited to fill out and upload all wine production information to the digital label application. This simplifies the process and reduces the risk of errors. With digital labels, companies can update information without having to print and distribute new paper labels.
If your company is looking for a tool to create the digital product passport for wines, Deply offers a digital label generator which is compliant with the new labeling and traceability regulations for wines, helping producers to develop their digital information strategy, and manage their entire wine supply chain from one single application.
