REGULATORY ADVICE

Minimum sizes of regulatory policies in food and cosmetics (France)

Some regulatory tips to consider when designing labels

Affixing adhesive labels to food and cosmetic products meets very strict regulatory requirements, in France and in the European Union. Before requesting the printing of your labels, you must ensure that these labels comply with the regulations. Here are some examples offered by way of illustration:

Warning: The information on this page is provided for illustrative purposes only. They are not exhaustive and may no longer be up to date. It is your responsibility to ensure that your labels comply with the regulations in force.

Focus on food labels

Food labels must comply with the french "INCO" regulation (Regulation n ° 1169/2011 known as INCO, published in the OJEU on November 22, 2011) which notably gives requirements in terms of readability

Mandatory statements must be written in a minimum character size of 1.2mm high. If the largest side of the package has an area of less than 80 cm2, the minimum character size is reduced to 0.9 mm.

Since 12/13/2016, the nutritional declaration has been made compulsory on the labels. Thus the energy value and the amounts of lipids, saturated fatty acids, sugars, carbohydrates, proteins and salt must be listed visibly in a table on the packaging. In the event that you do not have sufficient space to insert a table, you must present this information in linear form.

Concretely :

• 1.2mm high: This corresponds to an uppercase "A" with 4.5 pt size written in Arial, or a lowercase Arial "a" written in 6.2 pt size
• 0.9mm high: This corresponds to an uppercase “A” with 3.5 pt size written in Arial, or a lowercase “a” in Arial written in 4.7 pt size

Focus on cosmetic labels

Cosmetic labels must comply with the European Cosmetic Regulation n ° 1223/2009, which covers requirements such as the name of the responsible person, the country of origin, the nominal content, the date of minimum durability and the period after opening ... Several mandatory symbols are required on cosmetic labels. There is no mention of a minimum size, however the Regulation indicates that the mandatory information must be printed "in indelible characters, easily legible and visible"

General recommendations

As a precaution, ADESA recommends that you never use a character with a size of less than 4 pt on your food or cosmetic product labels.

For reasons of readability, it is strongly recommended to print the mandatory information in black text on a white background. Trapped texts (white text on a solid color or black) are strongly discouraged in small size, for questions of legibility and sharpness in printing, a clogging phenomenon can occur on small characters

When choosing the font (or typography), avoid fonts that are too artistic, too thin or too condensed for your mandatory mentions. Favor highly readable fonts, with a thick body and a little or no condensed approach, to ensure optimal readability.

Finally, before proceeding with your order, we recommend that you print your labels at scale 1 on your printer, in order to check their readability and the conformity of the heights of the characters.