Labels that sell! Above left are the new label designs produced for Batanes MSME beneficiaries of the OTOP Next Gen Program.

Even MSMEs from the island province in the northernmost part of the country benefitted from DTI’s OTOP Next Gen Program with at least eight food processing firms receiving new label designs for their products.

The eight firms and their products are: Big Mama’s Kitchen Treats producing nutritious wakay (camote or sweet potato) chips in three flavors – cheese, sour and plain salted; CAJ Food Products producing ube, camote and sudi cookies; Pableo Food Products, makers of turmeric powder, anaha tea and hama capsules; AJ’s bread and pastries producing cookie sticks, camote and ube cookies; Infant and Young Child Feeding and Breastfeeding Support Group which processes seaweed noodles and seaweed chips; Milagrosa Multi-purpose Cooperative, processors of day-old flying fish and longtom Spanish style Sardines; Lydia’s Food Products, makers of organically grown turmeric powder; and San Antonio Marginal Farmers’ Multi-purpose Cooperative which also makes sudi chips, camote chips and ube chips.

Sudi Chips are made from taro rootcrops while anaha tea is ginger tea and hama capsules are made from yellow ginger or turmeric.

These MSMEs underwent product cliniquing with experts and designers to properly identify the necessary features and designs for their new labels. The outputs of this cliniquing were distributed to the MSMEs on 25 and 28 January 2019 at the Negosyo Center Training Room of DTI Batanes.

Business Development Division (BDD) Account Officer Liz Minerva F. Raterta explained that under the OTOP Next Gen Program, the label designs are provided free of charge and that 500 pieces were printed for each product label.  DTI’s OTOP Next Gen Program offers a package of assistances for MSMEs with minimum viable products to come up with new or better offerings with significant improvement and innovation in the areas of quality, product development, design, packaging, standards compliance, marketability, production capability, brand development, among others.

The new product labels conform to the required label specifications for registering with the Food and Drug Authority for a license to operate (LTO) and acquiring a Certificate of Product Registration (CPR). The products are available at the OTOP Philippines Hub located at Tuguegarao City Airport in Cagayan.♦

Date of release: 14 February 2019