Prepacked for Direct Sale (PPDS) - Industry Results 1 Year On

Erudus is used by over 85,000 Caterers and Retailers, the user type most affected by this change in legislation.

And so, to better get an idea of where our customers are going right and wrong with their PPDS labelling - and consequently identity ways in which we can help them comply with legislation in the easiest and most efficient way, we decided to commission a report exploring the state of PPDS packaging a year on from Natasha’s Law.

So, what did we find out?

We analysed 116 PPDS labels on foods purchased from delis, farm shops, cafés, food markets and festivals across the UK.

At the top level, the results of our study showed that whilst most businesses are making an effort to communicate the required information, there remains much confusion around how best to display Allergen ingredients. Here are some of the key findings:

“A quarter of the products we analysed did not actually include the product’s name on the label, whilst a third of the products did not have an Ingredient Declaration. When it came to inspecting the Ingredient Declarations themselves, we found that only half of the products that included them on the label emphasised any Allergen ingredients - a main component of Natasha’s Law.

Precautionary Allergen Labelling (PAL) was used by a third of products studied in the report, with the inclusion of the phrase ‘May Contain’ followed by the name of an Allergen ingredient (e.g. Peanuts) on packaging being the most common way of doing so.

However, 1 in 10 of these products was over-zealous to the point of including all 14 major food Allergens on their PAL.

More troubling was the clarity of some labels - just under a third of the total products analysed had a label that was illegible, regardless of whether the information on it was correct.“

Here at Erudus, we’ll be using our findings to develop tools and create educational resources such as webinars to help our customers in foodservice get their PPDS labelling where it needs to be.

You can see the full results of the report, as well as examples of the PPDS labelling we studied by downloading the PDF.

To download the PPDS - Industry Results 1 Year On Report click here.