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ECCnet, explained for food brands

ECCnet is GS1 Canada's product registry. It is where Metro, Sobeys and Loblaw go to find your product data and photos. Here is what they require, the steps in order, and how long it takes.

Updated 22 September 2026 · 8 minute read

What is ECCnet?

A national registry, run by GS1 Canada, where every product has a record: the GTIN (the number under the barcode), the brand, descriptions in English and French, the dimensions of each packaging level, then the images and data taken from the package itself. You load the record once, and every retailer you publish it to receives it. GS1 Canada counts more than 700,000 products and more than 200,000 updates a year.

GS1 Canada names Sobeys, Loblaw, Metro, Walmart Canada and Costco among the retailers the registry connects suppliers to. Circle K and Couche-Tard have joined: on 4 May 2026, GS1 Canada announced that the company had become a subscriber, with access to ECCnet Registry.

Two terms to know: ProSYNC, the online tool where you enter your data, and content capture, when GS1 Canada photographs your products and records what is printed on the package.

Who requires what

GS1 Canada's grocery checklist is plain about it: to sell to Sobeys, Loblaw Companies, Metro, Whole Foods Market, Walmart Canada or Costco Canada, you must select the Retail Trading Partner Services Bundle. It combines four kinds of content: planogram (technical photos and measurements for shelf plans), marketing, eCommerce and nutrition.

A lighter eCommerce bundle is meant for suppliers who already have planogram and marketing content and need online coverage. Another adds foodservice content, for brands that also sell through foodservice distributors. The checklist does not mention Circle K or Couche-Tard, so ask your buyer what they expect.

Prices GS1 Canada publishes

Checked on gs1ca.org on 22 September 2026, before taxes, for the small business bundles (annual gross revenue under $2,500,000). Above that, GS1 refers you to an account manager.

GS1 adds that "additional annual maintenance fees may apply", without publishing the amount. Budget for shipping the samples too.

The steps, in order

1. Subscribe to GS1 Canada and create your GTINs

Everything starts with a GS1 Canada subscription, which gives you a GTIN licence. You need one GTIN per variant (size, flavour, packaging) and one for the case. GS1 says a welcome email arrives within 24 to 48 hours of paying. Stay away from numbers bought from resellers: ECCnet checks that each GTIN is tied to a valid prefix, and GS1 Canada warns that such numbers may not be linked to your business. Our barcodes and GTINs guide has the detail.

2. Load your data in ProSYNC

ProSYNC access is activated after you subscribe. The Basic version targets companies under $5 million in revenue: up to 100 GTINs, up to 10 hours of support, and manual entry, since the file upload tool is only in the Advanced version.

The wizard has four screens: packaging and category, trading partners, product details, then sharing. Saving a draft runs the validations, and you can only approve a product once it is compliant. Load the whole hierarchy: the unit, the case, and the pallet if you ship pallets.

3. Publish

This is the step people forget. GS1 Canada spells it out: unpublished products will not appear in retailer systems. According to the ProSYNC Publishing Guide, published data is available to your trading partners the next day. The same guide recommends publishing at least two business days before a partner's deadline, and earlier still if you entered data by hand and may have validation errors to fix.

4. Get your content captured

You register for the capture bundle, create a service request in GS1's tool, then ship samples to GS1 Canada's studio (on-site capture can be arranged for products that are hard to transport). GS1 photographs and measures the product and records the on-pack data in English and French, with a two-pass validation. Self-submitted data is not accepted. Food samples are then donated to food banks, unless you ask for them back, which costs a fee.

Send the final packaging, the one that will be on the shelf, because GS1 records what is printed.

5. Certify

Before the content goes to retailers, you review and certify it. For nutrition data, GS1 Canada states that the brand owner is responsible for certifying that it is accurate and complete. Check it line by line against your label.

How long it takes

GS1 notes that the timeline mostly depends on how quickly you gather your product information and send products for capture. That is where files stall, usually over a missing measurement or a description nobody has translated yet. If a buyer gives you a date, work backwards and leave at least a month.

The most common validation errors

ECCnet checks that the GTIN is well formed, that the data has the right structure, that it follows the community rules (mandatory attributes, regulatory requirements, French language), and that the company and GTIN are authenticated. Records tend to get stuck in the same places.

• A GTIN that is malformed or not yours: wrong length, a bad check digit, or a number tied to someone else's prefix.
• An empty French field. Brand name, short description and extended description each need both languages.
• The wrong category. Mandatory attributes depend on the product's category, so a wrong classification asks you for fields that do not apply.
• Dimensions measured on the wrong face. GS1's measurement standard says to find the default front first (the largest surface used to promote the product to the consumer). Millimetres always round up: 99.3 mm becomes 100 mm.
• The same GTIN on the unit and the case. Each packaging level has its own GTIN, and the record links the case to the units inside it.
• A product loaded and validated but never published. There is no error message; the buyer simply sees nothing.

What distributors usually do, and what they don't

It depends on the distributor, and GS1 Canada says so itself: brokers and distributors sometimes act as the vendor of record and load product data on behalf of their manufacturers, and sometimes they only receive the data from the manufacturer and publish it to retailers. Ask yours which role it plays, and get the answer in writing.

Even when a distributor loads for you, some things stay on your side. The GTIN licence is in your name: if the subscription is cancelled, GS1 Canada says you are no longer authorized to use those GTINs and your trading partners lose access to your data. Certifying nutrition data is the brand owner's job. And the samples and the French text come from you either way.

Prepare a clean product spec before you start

Most of the back and forth can be settled before you open ProSYNC. For each product, gather in one file:

• the GTIN for the unit, the case and the pallet, and the number of units per case;
• brand name, a short description and an extended description, in English and French;
• the product category (the GS1 GPC brick);
• net content and its unit, exactly as printed;
• height, width, depth and gross weight for each level, measured to the GS1 standard;
• packaging type and material;
• tax status (GST and HST), confirmed by your accountant;
• ingredients, allergens and the Nutrition Facts table, copied from the final label.

The public version of GS1 Canada's ECCnet attributes guide (an Excel file from 2016) lists 24 mandatory attributes for a grocery consumer unit. The current version, revised 25 May 2026, is for subscribers only.

The same data also feeds a bilingual product page behind a GS1 QR code. Scan a real demo (a fictional product) to see the result, or read our GS1 QR code guide.