To sell cannabis and cannabis-related products (such as accessories) in Canada, licensed producers will need to use GS1 global standards to identify products and enable supply chain traceability.
GS1 Canada has been consulting with provincial cannabis authorities and representatives from the cannabis business community to develop key guidelines on which global standards licensed producers will need to adopt.
Click here for a guide on how to Launch Cannabis Products in Canada.
In a global digital world, GS1 global standards help single out what really matters. Commonly encoded as barcodes and scanned at the checkout, global standards are used to uniquely identify companies, products, locations and their associated data. This standard data is used to fuel critical business processes throughout the value chain.
Global standards users benefit from:
Interoperability
Global standards level the playing field and facilitate business across borders for organizations of all sizes. Standards-based solutions ensure brand consistency and interoperability across systems.
Traceability
Global standards enable products to be tracked and traced as they move through the supply chain. This enables supply chain issues to be identified and products to be quickly located or recalled if necessary.
Operational Efficiency
Remove unreliable, time-consuming, manual business processes from the supply chain, minimizing the number of repetitive processes and significantly reducing the opportunity for human error.
Authenticity
By enabling the traceability of products throughout the supply chain, global standards reduce the risk of product counterfeiting.
Trusted Canadian Industry Expertise
Our ECCnet New Item Setup solution for cannabis and cannabis-related products includes mandatory attributes specifically requested by Canadian industry, removing any confusion or doubt about the required data.
To sell cannabis or cannabis-related products in Canada, licensed producers will need three things
To meet these requirements, you will need to become a GS1 Canada subscriber. Click the button below to get started.
If you need help throughout the subscription process, please consult this helpful guide.
Licensed producers will need to use Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs, also known as UPCs or EANs) to identify individual products across the supply chain.
This information must be encoded in a machine-readable GS1 compliant barcode.
For detailed information, please consult the following guides:
To sell cannabis products, there are three mandatory Application Identifiers or AIs that must be encoded into a barcode:
To encode the GTIN as well as the additional information, the following types of specific barcodes should be used.
Product Packaging: Use an Expanded DataBar or Stacked Expanded DataBar.
These types of barcode have the advantage of being able to encode multiple additional AIs within a single barcode. In addition, Expanded DataBars and Stacked Expandeded DataBars are omnidirectional, making them easier to scan in-store.
Shipping Cases: Use a GS1-128 barcode.
Like a DataBar, a GS1-128 barcode can encode multiple AIs within a single barcode.
In the sample pictures above, the barcodes are encoding three AIs: the GTIN, which appears after the (01), the Expiration Date, which appears after the (17) and the Lot/Batch number, which appears after the (10).
Cannabis-related products, such as accessories, do not need additional AIs to be supplied and can be encoded with a standard EAN/UPC barcode.
GS1 Canada subscribers can learn more about how to barcode products through The Learning Zone, GS1’s online education and training resource.
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