What is GPSR And How It Impacts You

From the 13th December 2024, the General Product Safety Regulations (GPSR) 2024 will be replacing the current General Product Safety Direction and the Food Imitating Product Directive, bringing substantial changes to product safety standards across the EU market.

The change is part of a new initiative from the EU to ensure all consumer products on the EU markets are safe, and it will apply to all manufacturers, exporters, importers, distributors or online marketplaces that supply in the EU and Northern Ireland.

The new regulations and the changes they bring are designed to update pre-existing legislation including the likes of cybersecurity and digital products. The EU’s justification being that the costs associated with accidents related to unsafe products are estimated at 11.5 billion euros per year for EU consumers and society at large. They argue that by bringing tighter regulation into force, this will reduce by several billions.

To help cover the changes coming into force we’ve asked our resident expert, and UK Road Freight Manager, Beth Keeler to explain.

What’s changing

Broadly speaking, this legislation marks the start of more thorough checks on goods and a greater responsibility being placed on sellers to the EU.

The big change being brought in as part of this shift in responsibility is that all UK exporters will need to appoint an Authorised Representative who will act as a contact point moving forward for the market surveillance authorities in the event of any product issues.

These Authorised Representatives will act on the UK exporters behalf, their registered name or trademark, as well as contact details, must be displayed on all products and/or accompanying documentation.

For importers, if the manufacturer is not based in the EU, then you are responsible for ensuring the manufacturer complies. As such, importers must make sure products comply, documents are correct and carry out appropriate conformity assessments. Importers are also expected to maintain records of compliance documentation. It is on them to conduct the relevant checks, verify all is compliant and report any incidents to the relevant authorities.

Importers are expected to conduct random checks on imported products to verify ongoing compliance and ensure proper labelling and safety information are included. They must also report any safety issues or accidents to the relevant authorities.

Likewise, distributors must verify that products meet safety requirements and have necessary documentation as well as ensure that products are properly labelled and include safety instructions.

What you’ll need to do

If you’re shipping goods from the UK to EU (or NI), the first thing you need to do is appoint an Authorised Representative to be responsible for GPSR – this can even be the importer of the goods.

Either way, moving forward you’ll need to include the address and contact details of said Authorised Representative on all products and/or supporting documentation. For importers and

distributors, you’ll need to reach out to your manufacturers and ask them for the details of their Authorised Representative and put a plan in place to monitor their role.

If you’d like to know more about this then please speak to your account manager and we’ll walk you through the changes. Much is still to be confirmed, and we will continue to monitor the effects of this new regulation.