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Our team of regulatory experts can evaluate your product artwork and provide an in-depth review, confirming compliance with your market requirements and addressing your technical concerns at the same time. We like to keep a finger on the pulse regarding any changes in compliance, keeping you aware of upcoming changes. So, you can ensure changes can be implemented without disturbing your supply.

Does your product label comply with the regulations for every market you are selling in?

Product labelling guidelines are subject to frequent updates from regulatory bodies. Referring to other products on the market can be ineffective, due to constant legislation changes and labelling commonly ingredient/composition driven. A new amendment missed can result in losses for example customs detaining stock, or product relabelling costs.

Additional information on support provided

We are always happy to offer advice and support for mandatory text, warnings, ingredient/composition lists, storage usage instructions and help with claim suggestions. A common feature overlooked is how readily translatable are your proposed labels? Is the marketing full of colloquial terms?

“A picture paints a thousand words” - could a description be replaced with a pictorial? This will later save on translation, which could occupy more label space resulting in a ‘fail-to-fit’ scenario, where there isn’t enough label space to fit in the necessary artwork. A universal label is always the ideal from a distribution cost perspective, but not always practical from a space perspective and varying legislation requirements in different markets.

Marketing is essential to attracting the right client. Getting it wrong not only risks reduced sales, but there can also be legal repercussions. Supporting you with the appropriate Advertising Code and the rulings of the Advertising Standards for your intended markets, we can work with you to create copy that is informative and persuasive, without being misleading. For example, a simple image of the product in the wrong surroundings, or incorrect claim can make your product non-compliant.

There is a shift away from traditional retail, as consumers embrace the convenience and savings of e-commerce. Depending on your product and the construction, there are certain aspects of information that will be mandatory to be displayed in online advertisements, for example chemical safety warnings (CLP) or textile composition… In addition to ensuring the claims and marketing being used are appropriate, we can help ensure that any mandatory product marking and information is present at the electronic point-of-sale.

Formulated products need supporting documentation to substantiate the safety and efficacy of your product. They normally also have specific mandatory information and layout requirements.

Support can range from ensuring ingredients used are safe and legal, risk assessments such as nutritional guidance for food, Cosmetic Product Safety Reports (CPSR), to creation of Safety Data Sheets (SDS) for general chemical formulations. We can provide you with formulation/nutritional guidance at any time during your development process to ensure that your product is safe, legal and capable of making the attention-grabbing claims you want.

CERT is happy to provide legal representation for your products in both the UK and all EU markets, having registered business in UK and Germany. This means we can support most products (non-food, supplements, food, pet food...) apart from medicinal products for both markets with no restrictions regarding selling platforms or distribution processes.

If you are looking for representation further abroad, please get in touch. We support international legislative requirements, but some of our customers need product representation further afield. So, we have contacts in the wider market who provide legal representation to support our existing clients we could introduce you to.

Apart from the common grammatical errors found with using auto-translation, there are also defined terms to be used in translation for certain product areas. Incorrect use of language can make your product labels non-compliant. There are also scenarios for example recycling, where a recycle in store statement is suitable in some markets, but others will have kerb-side recycling for that material and vice versa.

Translations are checked by our dedicated native speaking team, who are normally based in that market with legislative and product experience to provide a comprehensive solution to your translation requirements.

Additional information on support provided.