Amendments to the Legal Inspection Requirements for commodities under RoHS Regulation in Taiwan

Two amendments were announced to mandate inspection requirements for commodities subject to Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) regulation in Taiwan on February 24 and March 15, 2022. They were announced by the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection (BSMI), Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) of Taiwan. The effective date of these revised inspection standards is February 22, 2022, whereas the old standards are invalid starting from January 1, 2024.

A total of 53 commodities are subject to RoHS regulation, and Section 5 “Marking of Presence” of CNS 15663 (2013) is included in all these inspection standards. The two new amendments cover the requirements for commodities like printers, storage devices (i.e. hard disk drives, HDD), monitors, etc., as shown in the table below.

For a commodity subject to a declaration of conformity, the declaration of conformity will be invalid from January 1, 2025, according to the explanations of these notices. It is therefore recommended for manufacturers or importers concerned to update the declaration of conformity accordingly before December 31, 2024.

To further explain the application scope for all the products, an explanation of exemption conditions is made, “Products belonging to medical devices or telecommunications terminal devices are excluded”. For some products with expanded application scope, for instance, “machines for receiving, converting, transmitting, or reproducing sound, images, or other data”, a gateway is added to the application scope of inspection standards; a rechargeable electric pencil sharpener is as well added to the application scope of the inspection standard of pencil sharpener, which will be subject to products imported or manufactured in Taiwan after January 1, 2024.

CNS 15598-1 (revised in 2020) limits requirements for mercury content in cold cathode fluorescent lamps and induction lamps (<500 mm: 3.5 mg or less, 500 mm ~ 1500 mm: 5 mg or less, > 1500 mm: 13 mg or less).

* CNS 15663: Guidance to Reduction of the Restricted Chemical Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Taiwan national standard related to RoHS).