The conference "Mandatory Labeling of Goods: Preparation and Implementation" was held online on January 26, 2021.
It brought together representatives from various sectors of the Russian economy. The transition to a mandatory labeling system has been underway for a fairly long time now, but the those involved in this process still face some difficulties and many issues require a collective mind and experience sharing.
The best professionals and experts elaborated on whether various industries are ready to undertake mandatory product labeling: challenges, issues, and ways out. They shared how they manage the risks associated with the legislative aspects of product labeling and many other things.
NANOLEK was among the first companies in the pharmaceutical segment to roll out “Labeling” project: on November 21, 2019, the BioMedical Complex in Kirov region issued a labeled commercial batch of Hunterase®, a medicine for the treatment of mucopolysaccharidosis type II, which is on the list of 14 high-cost nosologies.
The panel session was attended by Alexey Ryzhy, Director of the Information Technology Department at NANOLEK, along with his colleagues from other companies: moderator Eduard Murakhovsky (Project Management Director, Pharmimex); Ilya Sadovenko (IT Director, Mary Kay Europe); Alexey Kadochnikov (IT Director, OTCPharm); Alexey Kuzmin (IT Director, GEROPHARM); Victor Dmitriev (CEO, Association of Russian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (ARPM).
The session focused on interacting with counterparties when introducing the labeling system. The experts talked about how market representatives are ready to handle labeled products, the major difficulties they face when dealing with the simplified labeling scheme for commodity balances, how to sell unlabeled balances, and how to assign a liability for labeled goods when selling goods through agents, and more.
Alexey Ryzhy shared his practice of applying labeling specifically in pharmaceutics, given the challenging nature and many levels it has. This experience is a thing of value and use for the colleagues from other industries.
Practice shows that assessing whether the market is ready for labeling before the system is launched is hardly possible: while the project has been in place since 2016 and was launched in June 2020, market players, even the operator, were not 100% ready for a large-scale launch. The best way to launch the system is to simplify it as much as possible and gradually build up the functionalities to the target level rather than expanding the most sophisticated and full version of the system to all market players straight away.
Alexey Ryzhy: "The framework that market players interact through the task group under Roszdravnadzor turned out to be incredibly effective. All those involved in the turnover, even representatives of the regulators (Roszdravnadzor, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Health, the Federal Customs Service, etc.), were indeed given a chance to contribute to the growth of the system and address the toughest matters all by themselves very quickly. This is why we recommend that other industries and their respective regulators should set up the task groups of this kind."
