SG Matcha Label Fields: Who Owns What

You have chosen a Japanese matcha supplier, the bulk cartons will clear into Singapore, and your own entity is about to put its name on a 100 g retail tin or a 1 kg foodservice bag. The question that now holds up the first purchase order is not customs — it is artwork: which fields must appear on the Singapore-facing pack, and which of them you cannot write yourself because only the producer in Japan holds the data.

This article covers the finished pack that your Singapore entity is legally responsible for, and the supplier-side data you need in writing before you lock artwork. The consignment-level paperwork that gets the goods released — importer licence, permits, consignment declarations — is handled separately in the SFA import document split article. Storage and last-mile conditions in a tropical climate are covered in the warehouse and last-mile piece, and if your concern is lumping or hardening in the bag rather than what is printed on it, go to caking cause isolation instead.

Note on sources and dates: the statements below about Singapore requirements reflect the Singapore Food Agency's published labelling guidance and the Food Regulations as available at the time of writing. Both are amended periodically. Verify the current text at SFA's labelling and packaging information page and in the Food Regulations on the Singapore Statutes Online site before you send artwork to print, and re-check at least twice a year. We are a matcha producer and exporter, not your regulatory adviser; where a field is borderline for your specific pack, ask SFA directly.

The structural point: the repacker owns the label

When bulk matcha arrives in a 1 kg or 5 kg carton from Japan and you repack it in Singapore into consumer or foodservice units, the pack that reaches the buyer is yours. The Japanese carton's own markings — Japanese-language ingredient line, domestic best-before format, producer address — do not carry over to the new pack. They stay with the bulk carton, which is a useful traceability record but is not the label the Singapore market sees.

This has one practical consequence that decides whether you reprint: every field on your artwork has an owner, and there are exactly three kinds of owner.

1. You. Fields that depend on your business and your pack, not on the producer. Nobody in Japan can supply these and you should not wait for them.
2. The supplier, via a written specification. Fields where you are transcribing the producer's data. If you estimate them, you are printing a number you cannot defend.
3. A certificate tied to a specific lot. Claims you must not print at all unless a document covering that lot exists in your file.

Buyers who treat bucket 2 and bucket 3 as "we will ask later" are the ones who reprint. In our export experience the second lot is where it surfaces: the first lot ships against provisional figures, the artwork goes to print, and the second lot's analysis comes back slightly different.

Bucket 1: fields you write yourself

These belong to the Singapore entity and should never be left blank pending supplier input.

• Name and address of the local company. Singapore requires an identifiable local party on the pack — importer, distributor, or manufacturer as applicable to your role. If you repack, you are the one named. A Japanese producer address alone does not satisfy this.
• Product name / common name. What the product is, in terms the buyer understands. "Matcha" alone may be acceptable as a descriptive name, but if you have added anything — sugar, milk powder, maltodextrin for a latte premix — it is no longer a single-ingredient product and the name and ingredient list change accordingly.
• Net weight. Your pack size, in metric units.
• Ingredient list. For pure matcha this is one line, but you are the one who declares it, including anything introduced during local repacking.
• Date marking on the retail pack. Derived from the bulk lot — see the worked example below.
• Lot or batch identification for your pack. Your own code, traceable back to the Japanese lot number.
• Storage instruction. Your call, based on how you expect the product to be held in Singapore. This is where tropical-climate advice belongs, not generic Japanese wording.
• Language. Singapore requires English on the label; additional languages are permitted provided the information is consistent. If the same artwork is going into a neighboring market, confirm that market's language rule separately rather than assuming the Singapore pack travels.

Bucket 2: fields that must come from the supplier in writing

These are the fields that cause reprints, because they look like something you can approximate and are not.

Nutrition values per 100 g

If you print a nutrition information panel — whether because a claim you make triggers the requirement, or because your retail customer demands one — the figures must come from an analysis of the product you are actually selling, not from a public nutrition database for "green tea powder." Matcha varies by grade: shading period, leaf position, and milling all move protein, fiber, and the figures derived from them. Ask the supplier whether their nutrition analysis is run per grade or per lot, and on what basis the values are expressed (per 100 g of powder is the usual basis; per serving requires you to define the serving).

Caffeine content

Caffeine in matcha is substantial because the whole leaf is consumed, and it is grade-dependent. Whether you are required to declare it depends on the claims you make and the current Food Regulations; whether you want to declare it is often a commercial decision driven by your café or retail customer. Either way, if the figure appears on the pack it must be the supplier's measured figure for that grade, with the test method stated. Never carry a number across from a different grade or a competitor's pack.

Origin wording

Decide early whether you are printing "Product of Japan," a prefecture ("Produced in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan"), or a region name such as Uji. Prefecture- and region-level wording is a stronger selling point and a stricter commitment: it must be true of the leaf in that specific lot, and the supplier has to be willing to confirm it in writing, lot by lot, because blends can draw from more than one growing area. If the supplier will only commit to "Japan," print "Japan."

Allergen and shared-line statement

Pure matcha has no required allergen declaration of its own, but the milling and packing line may handle other products. Ask the producer directly what else runs on the same line and what their cleaning regime is, then decide with your own advisers what precautionary wording, if any, you will carry. This is also a field your retail customers' own quality teams will ask about, so get the answer before you are asked.

Shelf life basis

Not the date itself — the basis. How long the producer warrants the product from its pack date, under what storage conditions, and in what packaging format. This is the input to your own date marking.

Bucket 3: claims that need a lot-specific certificate

Print none of these unless the document is in your file before the artwork is approved.

• Organic. A Japanese JAS organic certificate covers a certified operator and certified product. Confirm that the certificate covers the specific product and lot you are importing, and check the current Singapore position on organic claims and any required wording before printing a logo.
• "Ceremonial grade," "first harvest," "single cultivar." These are trade descriptors, not defined standards. That does not make them safe: they must not mislead. If you print "first harvest," you need the supplier to confirm the harvest in writing for that lot.
• Health- and nutrition-type statements. Antioxidant, energy, calm-focus and similar wording is the most tightly controlled area in Singapore labelling and the area that has moved most in recent years. Confirm the current rule against the SFA guidance above rather than copying another brand's pack — their pack may predate a change, or may simply be wrong.

Worked example: re-deriving a best-before after repacking

This is the step most often improvised, and the one SFA-facing documentation will expose if a customer complains. The arithmetic is yours to do; the inputs are the supplier's.

1. Take the bulk lot's pack date from the Japanese carton or the certificate of analysis — not the arrival date in Singapore.
2. Take the supplier's warranted shelf life for that packaging format, with its stated storage condition. Bulk nitrogen-flushed or vacuum packaging and a small retail tin do not behave alike, so ask which format the warranty refers to.
3. Subtract the time already elapsed between the Japanese pack date and your local repack date. This is your remaining life at the moment of repack.
4. Apply your own deduction for the new format and local conditions. Once bulk is opened and split into tins, headspace, seal integrity and ambient humidity change the picture. Your figure here should be justifiable from your own validation or holding trial, not a round number chosen because it looks tidy.
5. Print the resulting date in a format Singapore accepts, and keep the calculation on file linking your pack lot code to the Japanese lot number.

A common error: printing a best-before measured from the local repack date as if the clock restarted. It did not. The leaf was milled in Japan, and the portion of life consumed in transit and storage belongs to the product, not to the carton.

The five fields that most often change between lot 1 and lot 2

Check these before you commit to a print run quantity, because changing any one of them invalidates the remaining stock of printed material:

1. Nutrition panel values, when the second lot's analysis differs from the first.
2. Caffeine figure, for the same reason.
3. Origin wording, when the supplier switches growing area within the same grade.
4. Harvest or grade descriptors, when the second lot is a different harvest.
5. Shelf-life basis, when the supplier changes packaging format.

If any of these are uncertain, order a smaller first print run, or move the volatile data onto an applied label or a printed panel that can be changed independently of the main artwork.

What to put in your first email to the supplier

Ask for all of it at once, before the purchase order, naming the grade:

• Specification sheet for the grade, stating ingredients, origin wording the producer will commit to, packaging format and warranted shelf life from pack date with storage condition.
• Nutrition analysis per 100 g, stating whether it is per grade or per lot, and the date of analysis.
• Caffeine content for the grade, with test method.
• Allergen status and a statement of what else runs on the milling and packing line.
• Certificate of analysis format you will receive with each lot, and where the lot number and pack date appear on the carton.
• Organic or other certificates, if you intend to make those claims, with confirmation that they cover the product you are buying.

A supplier who cannot answer these before the first order will not answer them faster after it.

Next step

Most of bucket 2 and all of bucket 3 sit with the producer, so the efficient move is to request a sample of the grade you are considering and have the specification documents arrive with it. We send the spec sheet, nutrition and caffeine figures for the grade, and the certificate of analysis format alongside the sample, so your repack trial and your artwork draft can run in parallel rather than one after the other.

Request a sample and specification pack for your grade.