Cosmetics are subject to strict regulations in many places – including the EU – to keep them safe. One such system is the Cosmetic Product Notification Portal (CPNP), which has been created for this purpose.
Alex van der Burgh, SkinConsult CEO, on the CPNP and cosmetics in the EU
Since time immemorial, people have been trying to improve their appearance with the help of cosmetics. In ancient times, the Egyptians were already very skilled in the art of make-up and perfuming their bodies.
They used a wide range of materials, such as beeswax, ostrich eggs, crocodile dung and even antimony. Not exactly hygienic, let alone safe.
To this day, we still use cosmetics to improve our appearance. Fortunately, the production of cosmetics is a bit better regulated these days.
Cosmetics are subject to strict regulations in many places, including the EU. The Cosmetic Product Notification Portal (CPNP) was created to ensure the safety of cosmetics. Below, we’ll take you through what the CPNP is, exactly, and how it works.
Before a cosmetic product is brought to market in the EU, the product must be notified to the European Commission. This notification is done via an online EU portal.
For cosmetics, this is the Cosmetic Product Notification Portal, also known as CPNP. A notification of a cosmetic product in the portal is called a CPNP notification.
CPNP notifications are important for the safety of cosmetic products, because they help prevent harmful or unsafe products from entering the market.
The CPNP is not publicly accessible; except yourself, only two parties can do this. The first party being the competent authorities such as the NVWA (in the Netherlands); they check the CPNP notifications to:
The second party with access to the CPNP are the poison centers; in case of problems, they can view the CPNP notification and, in particular, the product formula, in order to prescribe fast and proper medical treatment.
It’s extremely important, of course, that these prescribed medical treatments are specific to when, for example, a child has drunk from a shampoo bottle. In this way, the CPNP contributes greatly to cosmetics safety.
To notify a cosmetic product in the CPNP, you’ll have to follow a number of relatively simple steps. However, it’s important that you have the correct information to do so. The steps for notifying a product in the CPNP are as follows:
Creating an EU Login account is easy, as the portal includes a great tutorial. This tutorial explains it’s unwise to use a functional or generic email address, among other things. Think of email addresses like info@yourcompany.com.
The reason for this is you have to upload some (sensitive) information about your products to the CPNP, so it’s better if not everyone can access it. In addition, it is recommended to set a strong password.
Make sure this is a unique password: the longer the better. If the password is too long to remember, a digital password vault like 1Password might be a good solution.
This step is fairly self-explanatory. You must create an organization, indicate whether it is a sub-organization, and indicate whether you are a distributor, delegate, or Responsible Person.
Again, a handy tutorial can be found in the platform itself, in which everything is explained step-by-step.
You can choose to do the notification yourself, or ask for help. If you enlist help from an external party for CPNP notification, this company will request access to your company.
You can grant this access via the CPNP. The external party can only see product notifications that they have made for you themselves – so they cannot see your other products. This means you should never give away your own login details!
When you start the notification, you must immediately choose what kind of notification your placing. Is the product a single product, or is it a multi-component product, consisting of several products together?
Think of a gift set with shower gel & shampoo, or a 12-color eyeshadow palette.
Because, in compliance with cosmetics regulations, it’s mandatory to notify products in the CPNP, the notification of products is free. The costs are therefore purely the time investment you (or a helping party) makes to carefully and properly fill in all the information.
It’s quite a list – which we’ll cover below – with some technical questions to answer as well. Consider wether you could make better use of your time by, for example, investing your time in marketing and sales to further grow your brand, and outsourcing CPNP notification.
The investment in product notification largely consists of the time investment you have to make to collect the correct cosmetic product information.
We would, of course, like to help you on your way and make this as easy as possible for you. This is why we’ve drawn up a handy checklist below, so you can immediately start collecting the right product information.
You need the following things to notify your cosmetic products:
Steps 7 and 8 are the most difficult questions. The safety assessor who assesses your products can answer these questions best. If the product is a multi-component product, most of these steps must be completed per component. Quite a hassle!
Now, you’re ready to notify your products in the CPNP. If this is all too much and takes too long, feel free to seek out the help of a external business like SkinConsult.
Our safety assessors have already notified hundreds of cosmetic products. They’ll be able to notify your products in no time, so you can quickly start selling your products without having to worry about non-compliance.
If things are getting a bit too much, feel free to ask SkinConsult for help.
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