ICA to extend origin labelling

ICA is now taking a major initiative and extending origin labelling of its private label products. For some time, ICA Sweden has had origin labelling for all private label products containing meat but the company is now adding more items. These include cheese, dairy products and frozen vegetables. This initiative is unique in Europe.

Today meat, fish, fruit, fresh vegetables, eggs and honey must be labelled with country of origin. Other items are labelled with packaging country which gives no indication of the origin of the raw material.

For almost ten years, ICA has gone beyond what the law requires and labelled all meat and poultry as well as all processed meats and prepared produce containing meat with the country of origin of the raw material. But now ICA Sweden is taking a further step and starting to label other items within its private label range. The company has selected product groups where customers have requested information about origin. Among other things cheese, dairy products, frozen vegetables, dried fruit and rice will be labelled with country of origin at ingredient level.

When this project is completed, ICA will have country of origin labelled approximately 2,500 products.

“Customers want to make informed choices and one key factor is where the item comes from. We at ICA will now clearly show product origin and we hope that other players in the industry will follow our example,” says ICA Sweden’s CEO Anders Svensson.

First up is cheese where the work of printing the milk’s country of origin on the packaging will be completed during the summer. Labelling of other selected products will be completed by the end of 2015 and the aim after that is to continue with more product groups. Items will be labelled with both packaging country and the country of origin of the raw material. The information will be found in the list of ingredients.

For more information
ICA Gruppen press service, telephone number: +46 702 53 66 60

ICA Gruppen AB (publ) is one of the Nordic region’s leading retail companies, with around 2,400 of its own and retailer-owned stores in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Group includes the retail companies ICA Sweden, ICA Norway and Rimi Baltic, ICA Real Estate, which owns and manages properties and ICA Bank, which offers financial services to Swedish customers. The Group also includes the wholly owned portfolio companies Forma Publishing Group and inkClub and partly owned portfolio companies Cervera, Hemtex and Kjell & Company. For more information see www.icagruppen.se

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