Ireland Barcode Acceptance

A typical question = “I am doing a course through my local enterprise office, and we have been told that only GSI barcodes are accepted by the larger retailers, and to get accepted in these stores, we will have to have GSI. If this info is incorrect, can you let me know?”

And our answer =
” Your local enterprise office is probably well-meaning, but they are also ill-informed.

We have thousands of customers in Ireland & UK using tens of thousands of our barcode numbers without any problems.

Our barcodes scan in all stores.

The only company we are aware of in Ireland, the UK & Europe that has any extra requirements that effectively force suppliers to become GS1 members is SuperValu – see https://barcode1.ie/barcode-acceptance/ for details. Their EDI system might require a GLN from GS1.

To lock yourself into GS1 annual fees for the sake of one retailer who you might or might not supply is very expensive. I talked with a man recently who had ten barcodes from GS1 Ireland. He had paid 200 euro pa for the last ten years. He was very upset (with GS1) and annoyed about the 2000 euro he had wasted (he then bought ten barcodes from us and cancelled his GS1 membership).”