Vinca Wines is an innovative wine producer specialising in premium wines packaged in eco-friendly cans. With a mission to make quality wine more accessible and sustainable, Vinca Wines has quickly gained popularity for its commitment to sustainability and its fresh approach to wine packaging.

The regulatory challenge

The brand faced regulatory challenges when trying to engage consumers via QR codes on their packaging within the EU. Regulation (EU) 2021/2117 means that brands can communicate multi-language ingredients, allergy, provenance information and health warnings all via a QR code. However, these regulations also prohibit the use of QR codes on wine packaging to show marketing and customer engagement content - essentially nothing that promotes the wine or encourages its consumption.

This represented a valuable opportunity lost for Vinca as it prevented them from communicating directly with any customers that interacted with their product in EU.

To navigate this, Vinca Wines partnered with SmartLinks to implement a dynamic QR code solution that still complied with EU laws while maximising customer engagement. These innovative QR codes enabled Vinca Wines to seamlessly tailor their content based on user location, ensuring legal compliance and enhanced user experience.

In addition to this, it is allowed to place a second QR code that does also link to marketing information elsewhere on the packaging if you have space. However, with the global transition to QR codes powered by GS1 now underway, over the next few years the QR code will gradually replace barcode as product identifier used at the point of sale so the use of multiple QR codes could create customer confusion and ‘scan frustration’ at the checkout.

The solution

To address this challenge, SmartLinks developed a sophisticated solution that would allow Vinca Wines to comply with EU regulations while still offering dynamic QR code functionality globally. The solution involved the use of the GS1 Digital Link standard, which allowed Vinca Wines to manage their product information in a standardised way, ensuring both legal compliance and future-proofing their data structure.

Read the full story here: https://www.gs1uk.org/standards-services/get-market-ready/qr-codes-powered-by-gs1/case-studies/Vinca-Wines