Skip to content
LabelClear
Sign inCreate a label

Glossary

Supplier specification

A supplier specification is the ingredients and allergen statement for a product you buy — chocolate, stock, pastry, sausage meat. It is the source for your PPDS label. The marketing name on the box is not.

Reviewed against official guidance.SourcesNot legal advice.

In practice

Ask for the current specification when you approve a supplier, and again when they change recipe or factory. File it against the product code you store in the kitchen, not against a nickname like “the dark chocolate”.

If two codes can sit on the same shelf, they need two lines in the ingredient library. A label that was right for the old code is wrong for the new one.

Questions

Is the ingredients panel on the box enough?
It is a start. A specification is better because it names allergens clearly and is what the supplier will tell you has changed.
Who updates the label when the spec changes?
You do, before the new ingredient is used in food you pack. See the guide on supplier changes.

Official sources

Everything on this page traces back to these. Where they and we disagree, they are right — tell us and we'll fix it.

Read next

All glossary terms

Short definitions used across LabelClear.

Try it

Create a label free

Put the definition into practice.

Related: resources · when-a-supplier-changes-an-ingredient · resources · how-to-build-an-ingredient-library · Compound ingredients