What must appear on a product label in India

The required declarations

Under the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, a retail package must show all of the following.

• Name and address of the manufacturer, packer or importer.
• Common or generic name of the commodity.
• Net quantity in standard units.
• Month and year of manufacture or packing.
• Retail sale price as "Maximum Retail Price ₹… inclusive of all taxes".
• Consumer care contact details.

Practical advice

Finalise the MRP before ordering labels. It is the single most common reason a batch of labels becomes waste, and unlike a design tweak it cannot be worked around.

Size and placement rules

The declarations have minimum type heights that scale with the size of the package, and they must appear on the principal display panel or a panel adjacent to it. Putting them on the base of a box is not compliant.

They must also be in a contrasting colour to the background and legible without magnification, which rules out light grey on white and tiny type squeezed into a corner.

Practical consequences for label design

Design the mandatory block first and lay the branding around it, rather than designing the label and discovering afterwards that the declarations will not fit at their legal minimum.

If a value is likely to change — MRP especially — consider a two-part label where the variable data is printed separately, so a price revision does not scrap the entire branded stock.

The specifications this applies to

For reference, here is how it works out on the products this comes up on most often.

• Product Labels — 50 × 50 mm finished, 2 mm bleed, 300 DPI minimum, from ₹3 per unit with a minimum of 100.

Ordering

Every file is checked automatically before printing, so a mistake in any of this is caught while it can still be corrected rather than after a run is on paper.

Standard delivery is free to every PIN code in India — two working days to a metro, up to twelve to the islands — and prices include GST, so the figure on the product page is the figure charged. Add a GSTIN at checkout and the invoice carries it for input credit.

Keeping the paperwork straight

Every order here produces a GST invoice automatically, carrying a consecutive invoice number, the HSN per line and the tax split by rate, so it stands up to an assessment without further work.

Add your GSTIN at checkout rather than afterwards. Amending an issued invoice is considerably more trouble than entering fifteen characters at the right moment, and until it is amended the input credit is not claimable.