Russia to start phasing in special labels for caviar on April 1

MOSCOW. April 1 (Interfax) - Companies involved in the sale of sturgeon and salmon caviar in Russia must register in the state labeling system starting April 1, 2024.

As per a previously approved government decree, in the second stage starting on May 1, 2024, producers will be required to supply their caviar with a code already applied to the packaging and send the information to the monitoring system.

An experiment was conducted on labeling red and black caviar from April 15, 2023 through March 31, 2024. The press service for Operator CRPT LLC, who runs the Chestny Znak state labeling system, said that, during the experiment, the application of codes was tested on all types of caviar packaging, including tin and glass jars, containers, boxes, PET with seaming and PET cans. There were 110 market participants involved in the labelling preparation project, including 68 caviar producers.

"Today we have more than 15,600 turnover participants registered in the system. Among them, 445 are manufacturers, 78 are importers, and 1,160 are distributors," Head of CRPT's Non-Excise Food Products Department Yulia Kuzmina said.