New Packing Regulation in July for Indian Pharmaceutical Exporters

India will implement new packaging regulation on its exported drugs and pharmaceuticals in July this year.

Drugs and pharmaceuticals exported from India will be required to add barcodes to packaging labels. This move aims to enable tracing and tracking of their products across the supply chain.

The new regulation is in response to quality concerns raised against Indian drugs by some African countries, according to local media reports.

In a public notice the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has issued a change in export regulations, stating that primary packaging should incorporate 2D barcodes on blister strips, vials and bottles, encoding a unique product identification code, batch number, expiry date and serial number.

Secondary packaging will be encoded with the same information using either 2D or 1D barcodes, while tertiary packaging (shipper or carton) must use 1D barcodes to encode the sam