The new Product Information Form (PIF) launched in February 2008 is designed to be used by companies to collect information about the origins of ingredients, their composition, the presence of allergens and other information to meet the legal obligations of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code.

The PIF is designed to permit all ingredient suppliers and food manufacturers to use this single document to satisfy their information needs to meet the legal obligations under the Food Standards Code.

The form is designed to provide a single template to replace the numerous company-specific information forms used across the food supply chain between suppliers and manufacturers.

Following feedback from industry on the PIF Word document, it is proposed that a new version of the form will be developed in an alternative format that will provide greater flexibility and compatibility with database systems. As an interim measure, the Australian Food and Grocery Council has developed an Excel version of the PIF form which works faster than the Word version and has been formatted to enable import/export capability to databases.
The latest issue of the Excel PIF form is Version 2.3, which has incorporated some format changes for ease of printing, and included additional explanatory notes.

Download* the Food Industry Product Information Form Excel Document (version 2.3) (file size: 284 KB)

This Excel version can import graphic images of logos and digital signatures, if they are in bit map (BMP) format. Logos need to be no bigger than 2.5cm x 2.5 cm and digital signatures must be sized to 9.8cm X 1.8cm. There are some comments provided on the form to assist the data entry operator at the beginning of the form. The form is formatted so that the print area of the form will only print out the data. The comments and page numbers on the side of the form should not be printed.

The Excel sheet substantially keeps the same questions, in the same order, as the original word document. In Section 4, the fields for information about vitamins, minerals and other nutritive substances have been increased for data entry purposes because using Excel and databases doesn't easily allow multiple entry of vitamins and levels in one data field.

The comments field at the end of the form in Section 8 has been split into two input fields to allow for limited text handling ability in database fields. When the form is printed, it is two pages shorter than the word document, being 15 pages instead of 17 pages.

Download* the original Food Industry Product Information Form Word Document (file size: 814 KB)

*Note: some users may experience problems downloading these files, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and we will email you the files you require.