If your business sells disinfectants or preservatives for canned non-food products or for metalworking fluids, and you're in the European Union, your life may just have become simpler. Soon you will have a rather limited selection of active substances to choose from when formulating your products, all thanks to the EU's Biocidal Products Directive 98/8/EC and subsequent Regulations and Directives.
July 31st is a very decisive date in the EU for biocidal active substances in these types of products. After that date and about 5-6 years on, no new biocidal substances for disinfectants, in-can preservatives or for metalworking fluids will show up on the market. Will that "break" mean a threatening decline in your product innovation, or will it let you catch up with the developments of your competitors?
Step-by-step weeding out
The first decisive date for the fate in the EU of disinfectants and for in-can and metalworking preservatives was Sept. 1, 2006. After then all biocidal actives for those product types not notified to the EU Commission in 2003 had to be gone from the market - and from the most distant storage rooms. This date surprised especially food and feed industries that are heavily dependent on daily disinfection. Many of these industries only discovered that deadline after it had passed, risking legal action by their country's authorities.
Now as of July 31st, applications for approval of the 100 or so notified substances had to be in. As to which of those substances were not supported by an application and will disappear for good is too soon to know. But in the end, to produce for instance a disinfectant, there may be less than 100 active substances to choose from.
It will take about 6 years before products containing the actives just applied for show up on the markets in the 27 EU countries and the 4 European Free Trade Association countries. Luckily, there are transitional measures that permit use of active substances as long as they are among the 2003-notified substances. For more details, contact DHI's biocide group via Stephen Wessels and Dorthe Nørgaard Andersen.