By The Pulseline News Desk
A quiet technological shift in how the country’s liquor bottles are marked for excise control has gone unnoticed in one important place — the price tag. While more than 80 percent of bottles now carry digitally printed security markings rather than physical paper stickers, manufacturers continue to pay the same rate they did when the system was introduced three years ago. That anomaly is now drawing scrutiny from lawmakers.
The issue came to light during a recent session of the parliamentary Committee on Public Finance (COPF), where Deputy Excise Commissioner M. Jayantha Silva had appeared to brief members on the country’s liquor security sticker regime. What emerged was a picture of a system struggling to keep pace with the industry it regulates.
A system built for paper
When the current security sticker framework was established in 2022, the assumption was straightforward: physical labels would be printed and applied to bottles. Manufacturers were charged US$ 5.99 per 1,000 stickers, rising to US$ 7.99 once port and customs charges were factored in. The arrangement made sense at the time.
But the production floor has moved on. Two major local liquor and beer manufacturers have found that moisture generated during their production process made it impractical — if not impossible — to apply paper labels. They have switched to digital printing directly onto bottles, a method that eliminates the cost of producing and physically affixing a sticker altogether.
Others followed. Today, most bottles leaving the country’s distilleries and breweries carry digitally printed security markings. The paper sticker, for most of the industry, is a relic.
Same rate, different reality
COPF Chairman Harsha de Silva had zeroed in on the contradiction. If the physical cost of producing and applying paper stickers is no longer being incurred, he had asked, why are manufacturers still paying the same US$5.99 rate?
It is a straightforward question with an uncomfortable answer. Deputy Excise Commissioner Silva had acknowledged that digital printing does, in fact, cost less — but had said the charge has remained fixed because it was locked in under the terms of the existing tender agreement. In other words, the contract has not caught up with the technology.
A window of opportunity
The timing of the scrutiny is significant. The current contract is set to expire on January 2, 2027, and a new tender process is already underway. That gives authorities a clear window to recalibrate the pricing structure to reflect the digital reality now dominant across the industry.
Whether the new tender will do so remains to be seen. But with parliament’s finance committee now asking pointed questions, the pressure is on for the Excise Department to ensure that the next contract reflects what manufacturers are actually paying to produce — not what they once paid to print and stick.
For an industry already navigating tight margins and heavy regulation, even a modest reduction in per-unit costs across millions of bottles could be meaningful. The sticker, as it turns out, carries more weight than its size suggests.
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