As regulatory authorities and consumers become increasingly vigilant about food product ingredients and nutritional content, having a single source of truth for product labelling is more critical than ever for manufacturers.
According to Mark Henderson, GM of Visual Lab, companies of all sizes – from small suppliers to global multinationals – face constant pressure to ensure product information is accurate across all packaging and sales channels, with any reformulations reflected immediately.
Visual Lab provides FMCG brands, along with their agencies and designers, a platform to store, manage, and standardise digital brand creative assets, including 3D rendering. The company recently expanded its services to include metadata management for Product Information Platforms (PIMs) by scraping information directly from product packaging files. This creates a precise, cloud-based archive of product labelling data accessible to any authorised brand personnel.
“We’ve developed a database with an integrated AI assistant that allows companies to query all stored data,” Henderson explains. “It’s a user-friendly system that marketing, procurement, or in-store merchandising teams can use to locate accurate pack information.”
With the surge of online channels – especially post-Covid – Henderson notes that ensuring consistent product information across every selling platform has become paramount. While accurate labelling is a clear regulatory requirement, consumers now also research product details online before making in-store purchases, especially those with dietary restrictions or those seeking healthier options.
In the past, slight discrepancies between the information on the physical packaging and what appears online might have been overlooked. However, brands are now judged by the accuracy of their on-pack information displayed on the “digital shelf.” For instance, consumers wanting more product details expect to find full nutritional facts on a supermarket’s website. Historically, this data might have been manually entered multiple times, creating opportunities for errors – an issue Visual Lab aims to resolve.
“We can extract the information from finished packaging artwork and feed it back into brands’ and retailers’ internal systems, establishing a reliable single source of truth,” says Henderson. “What’s on the shelf is precisely what’s in the system. If anyone needs that information – whether for e-commerce, grocery channels, or internal documentation – they know it’s correct and where it came from.”
Visual Lab has completely automated the process, according to Henderson. He explains that they have developed an in-house AI system that accurately extracts metadata from finalised PDF artwork files. This solution is highly efficient – significantly reducing turnaround times – and enables a globally scalable service across different markets, languages, and formats. By contrast, current industry offerings rely on manual processes, making them slower and less adaptable.
Ensuring regulatory compliance
Scraping and archiving data also helps FMCG manufacturers meet regulatory mandates across diverse
markets. Multinational companies often must include specific ingredient, nutritional, or warning details on product labels, which may vary by country, state, or administrative region.
As an example, Henderson describes a hypothetical regulatory change in the UK requiring an update to a number of artworks. “With our system, you can quickly identify all impacted packs and work with your agency or pre-press partner to update those files accordingly.”
Before Visual Lab, labelling information might have been stored on a corporate server, with a creative agency, or even on an individual’s desktop. Now, all Visual Lab needs is a final artwork file.
“We scrape the information, load it into the manufacturer’s PIM, and can do so regardless of the file’s origin, language, or location,” says Henderson. “Ultimately, this ensures a consistent, accurate archive of product data that’s always available when and where it’s needed.”
- To learn more about Visual Lab’s solution for creating a single source of truth for packaging labelling, take a look at the company’s website.
