Barcodes for Wine
Malta Wine Barcodes
You can purchase barcodes for wine below – you will receive EAN-13 barcodes that are suitable for use on all food and beverage products (including wines), in Malta and around in the world. If you are looking for barcodes for other alcohol products, check out our Barcodes for Alcohol page. Please refer to the FAQ’s at the bottom of this page if you need more information about barcodes for wine bottles. We have been selling barcodes to customers in Malta and worldwide for many years, and many of our customers are craft brewers, distillers and wine growers, wine distributors, and local businesses that produce and market wine, spirits and beer products.
Another code type often used on wine bottles is a QR code. Putting a QR code on your bottle that directs to your website can be very useful, and you can even link to a product page with details about that particular wine. We recommend a dynamic QR code as this allows you to change the page in the future.
Our barcodes get cheaper the more you buy, so if you think you’ll have some more products coming out soon that require barcodes consider making a bulk purchase.
Usually, a 13-digit EAN-13 barcode is used on wine and beer bottles in Malta (and the vast majority of countries). You can buy these barcodes above, and we will promptly email them to you.
It is not a legal requirement to have a barcode on your wine products. However, the vast majority of retailers require barcodes, so it’s a very a good idea to get them. Retailers use barcodes for stocktaking purposes (so that they can easily keep track of their inventory), and to make the sales/checkout process efficient and fast. The EAN-13 barcodes we sell are globally unique barcodes that comply with the standardised retail barcoding system used in Malta and worldwide.
Every different retail product requires a different barcode number (including product variations such as size or wine type). You will need two EAN-13 barcodes if your wine is being sold both as individual bottles and in cartons to be sold by the case.
You need a different barcode for each product when the price changes. If the price is the same (across all the product variations), then you might get away with using the same barcode number on all the product variations. This depends on which retail stores you are selling your products in – the larger retail stores, in particular, might require a different barcode for each product variation (especially if they do stocktaking automatically, instead of manually). We strongly recommend that you purchase a seperate barcode for each product to avoid confusion and allow the possibility of getting into bigger stores that require separately coded products.
Some retailers and wholesalers require ITF-14 barcodes (also called GTIN-14 barcodes) to go on the pallets of wine, and wine cases. An ITF-14 barcode goes on the delivery boxes that contain your wine bottles – please discuss this with your retailers to find out if they require these. ITF-14 barcodes are 14 digits long and are based on the 13 digit EAN barcode that goes on the wine labels. They are scanned when each delivery carton enters the warehouse/storage area so that your retailers know how many bottles of wine is in each box. This helps them to keep track of the remaining stock that’s in their warehouse and to know when they’re running low on a particular product and need to order more. Usually, you’ll need one ITF-14 barcode for each EAN-13 barcode that you have. You can purchase an ITF-14 barcode here if you need one. Occasionally a retailer/wholesaler might also require that you get an GS-128 barcode that encodes particular details (e.g. batch number, date, GLN number of the vineyard). If you need a GS-128 barcode we can provide this – please contact us for a quote (and tell us what information you need to be encoded into the GS-128 barcode).
No you don’t, all you need to do is to buy the barcodes on our website. You will receive your barcodes automatically by email as soon as we receive your payment. Each barcode will be a globally unique sequence of 13 digits, encoded into a barcode image (the vertical black bars and white spaces). No product information will be encoded into the barcodes when you receive them – your barcodes and products will only be linked together once you give them to your retailers, and the retailers enter the information into their inventory system (after that, when the barcode is scanned, the product/price information will appear on the retailer’s checkout screen).
Please see our step by step guide on How to Use Your Barcodes. We also have a short Guide to Retail Barcodes document.