Drink label compliance: why the bar just moved for drink brands

In June 2026, the Australian Beverages Council relaunched DrinkFacts, a consumer information platform covering non-alcoholic drinks. It walks the public through ingredients, nutrition, sustainability and recycling. It also teaches them how to read a label.

That last part is the one that matters for your business.

This is not a regulator publishing guidance for industry. This is the peak body for the drinks category backed by Coca-Cola Australia, Suntory Oceania, PepsiCo Australia and Red Bull Australia – publishing information for the people who buy your product. It is teaching your potential customers how to scrutinise the exact thing you are putting on shelf.

What the label section actually covers

The reading labels page is built around an interactive sample drink. Consumers hover over it, and the label pulls apart into its component elements, eighteen of them.

The ingredient list, and the fact that ingredients appear in descending order of weight. Percentage labelling, so shoppers can see how much of the characterising ingredient is actually in there. Additives declared by class name and number. Allergen information. Date marking. Storage conditions. Net contents. The supplier’s name and business address. Lot identification, traceable back to the batch. Country of origin. Legibility clear, English, high contrast. Advisory statements for sensitive groups. The container deposit refund marking.

Then the two panels that do the heavy lifting. The Nutrition Information Panel, with a worked example teaching shoppers to compare products using the per 100 mL column rather than the per serve column. And the Health Star Rating, with a slider so consumers can see how the badge shifts from half a star to five.

This is a competent piece of consumer education. That is precisely why it should have your attention.

The claims distinction most founders get wrong

Buried in that list of eighteen elements are two separate entries for claims.

One is nutrition and health claims. The other is lifestyle and process claims. DrinkFacts teaches consumers that these are different things.

They are. Nutrition content claims and health claims sit under Standard 1.2.7 of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. “Good source of fibre” is a nutrition content claim with a compositional threshold attached to it. A health claim connects a food or a property of a food to a health effect, and it must either match a pre-approved relationship or be self-substantiated and notified before you use it. Health claims are also gated by the Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion; a drink that fails the NPSC cannot carry a health claim at all, no matter how good the evidence behind it is.

Lifestyle and process claims are different. “Natural.” “Vegan.” “Australian made.” These are not health claims, and they are not caught by Standard 1.2.7. Founders sometimes read that as freedom.

It is not. “Natural” has no definition anywhere in the Food Standards Code. That does not make it safe; it makes it a matter for the Australian Consumer Law, where the test is whether the claim is misleading or deceptive, and the ACCC has taken action on exactly this kind of wording. Country of origin has its own instrument entirely: the Country of Origin Food Labelling Information Standard 2016, not the Code.

So the two claim types are separately regulated. Neither is unregulated. And your customers are now being handed a framework for telling them apart.

The Health Star Rating question sitting underneath all this

DrinkFacts teaches consumers to use the Health Star Rating to compare similar drinks side by side.

Here is the tension. The Health Star Rating is voluntary. Uptake across eligible packaged products in Australia sits at around 39 per cent, well short of the 70 per cent target Food Ministers set for November 2025. That gap is why FSANZ raised Proposal P1067 in February 2026, considering whether the Code should be amended to make the symbol mandatory. The first call for submissions closed on 5 July 2026. A second round would follow before Ministers vote.

Which means a consumer taught to look for a star rating is now equipped to notice when there isn’t one. And selective application of stars on the products that score well, no stars on the ones that don’t, is precisely the pattern that put mandatory HSR on the table in the first place.

Every element on that list is checkable before you print

Here is the part I want you to sit with. Nothing on that eighteen-element list is a surprise. Not one of those requirements arrived in June.

What changed is the audience. Requirements that used to be checked by a regulator on complaint, or by a retailer at range review, are now being explained in plain English to the person standing in the drinks fridge deciding between you and the brand next to you.

So the bar for drink label compliance just moved. Not because the law changed, but because the number of people who can read your label properly went up.

The good news is that this cuts both ways. Every element on that list is something you can verify before artwork goes to print. Ingredient order. Percentage labelling. Allergen declarations. NIP values and rounding. Country of origin. The claims, both kinds. A compliant label doesn’t just survive scrutiny. It rewards it.

Still unsure whether your drink label and its claims actually stack up under the Food Standards Code? Most drink brands don’t realise they’ve made a compliance mistake until the cans are printed or a retailer flags it, and now consumers are being handed a guide to spotting it too. We’ve put together a free guide breaking down the six biggest mistakes food brands make with labelling and health claims, and how to avoid them before they become expensive problems. Download the free guide here: https://learn.nprconsulting.com.au/labelling-health-claims