False Bottoms, Double Walls and Misleading Packaging Design

Article 10's minimisation duty includes a specific edge: packaging must not be designed in ways that mislead about the quantity or nature of the contents - the classic shapes being false bottoms that raise the product inside an oversized container, double walls that thicken a pack beyond any structural need, and oversized formats whose extra volume serves presentation rather than any Annex IV criterion. Such features are not minimisation failures to be argued; they are the duty's named prohibition territory.

The line is function. A raised base that forms part of a dispensing mechanism is a feature. A raised base whose only measurable effect is shelf presence is the prohibition's subject, whatever the artwork calls it.

The cosmetics and personal-care shelf is the historical habitat: jars whose glass thickness impersonates volume, bottles inside bottles, cartons at twice the product's height for gift presence. Food has its versions - the slack-filled bag whose headspace serves the marketing photograph (genuine product protection headspace is a criterion argument; a bag consistently half air by design is a complaint pattern), the tray whose walls billow a modest portion. E-commerce contributes the luxury unboxing format whose void is filled with tissue and theatre. In each habitat the test is the same and it is physical: measure the feature, ask what it does, and see whether the answer names a criterion or an impression.

Enforcement and competitor complaints in this area run on pattern evidence: the same product in a smaller market format without the feature (the feature is not protecting anything the smaller format leaves unprotected), internal documents valuing the feature in shelf-impact terms, consumer research showing the quantity impression formed. Businesses should assume their design rationale will be read in that company. The protective habit is the Annex IV argument written at design time, in functional language, by the people who made the decision: a feature whose paper says 'premium presence' will be judged by those words, whatever the engineer's private reasoning was. Write the file for the reader you hope never arrives; in this area, it is the file itself that usually decides whether he does.

Formats inside the prohibition's territory are redesigned by subtraction with a marketing negotiation attached: true-size formats, honest windows, structural design that earns presence by form rather than by volume claims. The negotiation goes better with data - consumer research consistently shows the trust penalty when a buyer discovers the deception at home exceeds the shelf gain, and several brands have converted honesty itself into the shelf strategy (right-sized premium formats marketed as such). Where a format's economics genuinely depend on the impression, the business-model conversation from the below-grade-C guide applies: better held in the boardroom in 2027 than in a corrective action in 2031.

Food slack fill separates lawful headspace from the pattern by evidence. Headspace that protects (crisp products settling, nitrogen flushing for freshness, expansion allowance) is quantifiable: settling studies, fill-level specifications with tolerances, machine capability data. The pattern's signature is the opposite profile - a large, consistent void with no functional study behind it and a fill weight accurate to the gram at the bottom of an airy bag. Businesses should hold the settling and capability data per line as routinely as they hold the weight checks, because in a slack-fill complaint the question arrives as 'show us why', and the answer either exists as studies or does not exist at all.

Where a retailer or brand owner specifies a format manufactured by another, the misleading-design duty sits with the name on the pack - the producer analysis from the roles station applies to design decisions as to everything else. Brand owners should therefore hold the design justification for own-brand formats in their own file, not assume the manufacturer's covers it: the manufacturer's file justifies the pack they were asked to make, and the quantity-impression question belongs to whoever briefed the impression. Contract language follows: format changes proposed by either side carry the justification duty with them, in writing, before tooling.