News Details

On 14 September 2026, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) published new information clarifying the responsibilities of distributors for poison centre notifications under the Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) Regulation.

From 1 January 2027, distributors will be explicitly identified as duty holders under Article 45. This means that they will need to take action when placing a hazardous mixture on the market in a Member State not covered by an existing notification or when rebranding or relabelling a product.

Options for Distributors

In these cases, distributors may:

• Ask the supplier or original notifier to extend the existing notification to cover additional markets or product identifiers.
• Submit a separate poison centre notification themselves.

ECHA recommends that distributors check whether the required Unique Formula Identifier (UFI) appears on the label and whether the product has been notified in each intended market. Suppliers can assist with these checks by providing the poison centre notification submission report alongside the Safety Data Sheet (SDS).

This clarification follows an ECHA Forum enforcement project which found that 19% of inspected products were not linked to a Poison Centre Notification, and that 15% lacked a UFI on the label. Further analysis indicated that distributors needed to take action in more than one third of cases involving missing notifications.

UFI Labelling for Imported Mixtures

ECHA has also published a corrigendum to Version 6.1 of its guidance on harmonised information relating to emergency health response. This clarifies that the EU importer is responsible for placing the UFI on the label of an imported mixture. A non-EU supplier may label the mixture before export but should use the EU importer’s UFI. The update does not introduce new obligations.

ECHA has updated its Steps for industry guidance and will hold a webinar for small and medium-sized enterprises on 23 September 2026.