The Cabinet of Ministers has approved the procedure for mandatory labeling of bottled water and soft drinks. Labeling in the Asl Belgisi system, as well as measures to control it, will be introduced in stages in 2023-2024. During the project implementation, the experience of last year's pilot project will be taken into account.
The labeling requirement will take effect for both local producers and importers:
- for the first group (carbonated or non-carbonated water, drinks, as well as non-fermented sweetened fruit and vegetable juices, except for grape) - from July 1, 2023;
- for the second group (water and drinks in metal containers) - from August 1, 2024.
Initially, the labelling was to be launched on October 1, 2022.
Beverage producers will have enter into equipment supply contracts at least three months before the start of the process.
In addition, within nine months they will have to implement aggregated codes for batches of goods. Water and drink importers will be required to reflect the aggregate batch code on the cargo customs declaration from July 2023.
After the start of each stage, sellers will be given six months to sell off the remaining non-labelled drinks.
The system operator, CRPT Turon will provide free labeling codes for non-carbonated water, which is produced in Uzbekistan in bottles up to 0.5 liters.
The introduction of digital labeling of goods was announced in December 2018. It became known in 2019, Turon CRPT, owned by the USM holding of Alisher Usmanov and Rostec, hadd been assigned as the system's operator (the company has been entrusted with the same function in Russia).
