3 Real Compliance Requirements for Packaging Exported to India — FSSAI Food Labels / Legal Metrology Mandatory Declarations / BIS Material Certification: The 3 Compliance Lines Printers Must Distinguish When Accepting Indian Orders

In April 2026, a baking brand specializing in Indian chestnut crisps approached us to produce 20,000 gift boxes. The design files were complete: brand logo, net weight 400g, product name, ingredients list, nutrition facts table, production date field, and barcode.

The client wrote courteously in an email: “Our previous printer printed it this way too. We shipped 60,000 sets last year without any problems.”

During our prepress compliance review, we found that the artwork contained not a single rupee.

The information required on packaging in India does not follow the same system as the “net weight + ingredients list + barcode” format we are accustomed to. India’s Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011 require pre-packaged commodities to display the following on the Principal Display Panel: the name and complete address of the manufacturer, packer, or importer; net quantity; Maximum Retail Price including taxes (MRP); and a consumer complaint channel. Its definition of the “responsible party” is also broader than in most countries: the Brand Owner itself must be named on the label, and printing only the factory name is insufficient.

This was not our greatest concern. The second compliance line caused us the most concern.

We returned the artwork and the client asked: “Wouldn’t it be enough to add the MRP?”

This article covers 3 things: what each of the 3 compliance lines governs, which 3 documents printers must obtain from clients before production, and how to arrange the column-within-column layout structure of Indian labels without triggering rework.

The First Boundary: The 3 Lines Do Not Substitute for One Another; the Most Common Printer Error Is Assuming That 1 Line Is Enough

Let us first lay out the 3 lines. These are not 3 parallel regulations. They are 3 lines governing different subjects:

Each line has its own logic for determining who is responsible. This is the most counterintuitive feature of the Indian market:

• The responsible party under FSSAI is the Food Business Operator (FBO), meaning the company conducting food business in India. The FSSAI license number must appear on the Principal Display Panel, and the logo must be printed in a contrasting color.
• The responsible party under Legal Metrology is the Brand Owner. The regulations explicitly require the Brand Owner’s name and address to appear on the package, using wording such as “Marketed by” or “Brand Owner.” If the printer does not print this information, it is effectively helping the client omit a mandatory statutory declaration.
• The responsible party under BIS is the manufacturer or importer. There are 2 forms of the mark: Indian manufacturers use the ISI mark, consisting of the ISI letters within a circle plus the license number, while importers participating in the Compulsory Registration Scheme use the CRS registration mark. Applying the ISI mark in India without a valid license constitutes a criminal offense under Section 29 of the BIS Act 2016, not merely an administrative penalty.

There is also a structural issue specific to India: the regulations require information in “English or Devanagari”. Printers therefore frequently encounter bilingual copy, with the brand name and marketing text in English while mandatory declarations must also be provided in Devanagari. Many Chinese design files contain no Devanagari font at all, and the issue is often discovered only at prepress. The printer then has to source a font at the last minute or leave the Devanagari position blank and print English instead. The latter is non-compliant in India.

Our current approach is to make the first item on the prepress checklist for Indian orders read “Who will provide the Devanagari mandatory declarations?” If the client provides them, we typeset them as supplied. If the client does not provide them, we reserve the position and mark the artwork in red with “DEVANAGARI REQUIRED HERE.” We never substitute English text.

The Second Boundary: Legal Metrology Requirements for “Printed on the Principal Display Panel” and Font Size Are Stricter Than Most People Expect

This is the most important practical section of the article because it concerns printer responsibility. Errors in FSSAI content are the client’s responsibility, but if a Legal Metrology declaration is omitted, the printer will face the complaints.

First: Principal Display Panel (PDP). These declarations required by law must appear on the Principal Display Panel: the name and complete address of the manufacturer, packer, or importer; net quantity; MRP including all taxes; unit price when sold by quantity; and the consumer complaint channel, by telephone or email.

Our current practice is to include “PDP Face Confirmation” as a separate field on the prepress checklist rather than combining it with “Layout Confirmation.” When a client answers “front,” they are usually thinking of the front seen when the box is opened, whereas the regulations refer to the face displayed and visible on the retail shelf. If this ambiguity is not clarified, the printer bears the cost of rework.

Third: How net quantity must be expressed. This is a challenge specific to India. Net quantity must be expressed in standard measurement units: solids by weight and liquids by volume, using units of g / kg / ml / L. The regulations permit the use of symbols such as “1 N” or “1 U” to declare net quantity when used with a measure word such as number, piece, or pair, but this is an additional form of usage and cannot replace the standard units.

Another question clients frequently ask is: the MRP must be the price “including all taxes.” In other words, the rupee figure printed on the package is the retail price after tax, not the ex-factory price or the price before GST. The printer does not need to calculate this figure, but must clarify it. If the client’s internal quotations to the sales team use tax-inclusive or tax-exclusive prices, the difference is 18% GST. An error means every label in the entire production run is unusable.

• Packaging surface area below 100 cm²: the ingredients list, batch number, nutrition facts table, and directions for use may be omitted.
• Packaging surface area below 30 cm²: the production date, shelf life, and expiry date may be omitted.

Therefore, small seasoning packets and individually wrapped candies in the Indian market can have much simpler labels than those required for comparable domestic export orders. Gift boxes are not included in this exemption. Gift boxes are large, contain multiple items, and are sold at retail, so not a single mandatory declaration may be omitted.

The Third Boundary: On the BIS Line, Printers Must Monitor the “Form of the Mark” and “Applicable Products”

The printer bears the least responsibility under the BIS line, but must monitor the most details because an incorrectly printed mark can result in criminal-level consequences.

There is also a firm requirement: the mark must appear on the product or packaging, and its position and minimum dimensions must comply with BIS requirements. Many clients treat this mark as a decorative element in the design, shrinking it, placing it over a busy background, or overlapping it with the brand logo. The BIS mark must be clearly legible and must not be obscured or distorted.

To discuss applicable products again, this is what printers should ask about first. Mandatory BIS certification is listed product by product, rather than applying to all packaging. The categories that directly affect printers mainly include:

• Food- and drinking-water-contact materials: packaging paper IS 1397 (paper in direct contact with food must not use recycled paper), plastics IS 9833 and IS 10146 (polyethylene containers for drinking water), and metal cans IS 9396 (tinplate steel sheet, which must not use lead-based solder).
• Certain products subject to compulsory registration: packaged drinking water, packaged natural mineral water, certain food additives, and certain packaging materials require registration certificates to be obtained before clearance of the first shipment.

First, does the IS standard number on the client’s certificate match the material actually used for this order? A common situation is that the client’s paper supplier holds an IS 1397 certificate, but the paper purchased for this order was switched to another supplier. The new supplier’s paper has no certification, while the artwork still displays the mark. If there is an incident, no party in the supply chain can clearly establish responsibility.

Second, does the number beneath the mark match the number on the certificate? The string of numbers beneath the BIS mark is the license or registration number. Printing the wrong number is equivalent in substance to not printing the mark at all.

Our current practice for Indian orders is to require a copy of the certificate before printing and verify 3 points: the standard number on the certificate, the material supplier’s name, and the mark number. If any of the 3 do not match, we do not print the mark. We reserve the position and record the reason in the order notes. This is far less costly than being discovered by an authority after the fact.

The 3 Documents to Request from Clients When Accepting Indian Orders

At the operational level, before starting production for an Indian order, our printer must obtain the following 3 items. If any one is missing, layout work is suspended:

• First: a schedule of mandatory declarations (the Legal Metrology set), confirmed item by item and signed by the client. It must include at least: the Brand Owner’s complete postal address, including the PIN code; manufacturer or importer information; net quantity; MRP including taxes; consumer complaint telephone number or email address; and identification of the PDP face. Every field in this schedule must be supplied by the client. The printer cannot fill in the MRP on the client’s behalf or decide the Brand Owner’s address. Our standard response is: “We will print these numbers and names exactly as provided, without changing a single character. However, you must provide us with a signed schedule because, if one of India’s 3 compliance lines is missed, the goods will be detained at a distribution warehouse, which is beyond what we can change.”
• Second: Devanagari copy or clear authorization for the Devanagari layout. If the client asks us to provide the Devanagari text, we typeset it according to the font-size and layout requirements of FSSAI and Legal Metrology. If the client supplies the text, we must confirm that the font covers Devanagari characters. Both scenarios must be settled before proofing and cannot be deferred until mass production.
• Third: a copy of the BIS certificate and confirmation of mark use. This must include the IS standard number, material supplier, mark number, and confirmation that the material actually used for this order is consistent with the certificate. Without this document, we do not create a position for the mark. It is better to leave it blank than to print a mark that may be invalid.

Further Reading

• 3 Special Requirements for Food Packaging Exports to Southeast Asia: Halal/Vietnamese TCVN/Indonesian SNI — Southeast Asian and Indian labeling systems both fall into the category of “multilingual + importer responsibility,” but their approaches to mandatory certification are completely different.
• 4 Categories of Compliance Requirements for Packaging Exports to the EU: REACH/EC 1935/2004/94/62/EC/EN 13427 — the EU framework consists of 2 lines, “materials + responsible party,” and comparing it with India’s 3 lines makes the distinctions clearer.
• 4 Categories of Actual Compliance Requirements for Packaging Exports to the United States: FDA/UL/Prop 65/CPSIA — this also follows the structure in which the printer only prints the mark while the client is responsible for the content, making the division of responsibilities easy to compare.
• 3 Practical Boundaries of Metrological Guarantee Capability for Prepackaged Commodities — net quantity is also subject to strict requirements in China, and the Indian system developed from this foundation.
• 6 Types of Mandatory Food Packaging Identification: Ingredients/Allergens/Shelf Life/Nutrition Facts/Net Quantity/Origin — a comparison between the content covered by the FSSAI line and China’s GB 7718.