China’s QS Market Access Reshapes Food-Contact Plastic Packaging Compliance

The first access results for food-contact plastic packaging have been released: at the end of last year, 29 enterprises—after passing the market-access review for food-use plastic packaging, containers, tools and related products—received production license certificates from AQSIQ. The approval covered all 39 products across the six major categories included in the first batch.

Starting in August this year, food producers, distributors and consumers buying food-use plastic packaging, containers, tools and similar products should check for the 'QS' mark and number; responsible parties that fail this requirement may face heavy fines of RMB 50,000 to 200,000.

Regulatory observations show that non-compliant packaging mainly stems from two factors: abuse of raw materials and additives, and confusion or absence of product standards.

In the first case, well-run companies generally select materials and follow national standards well. Some small enterprises or workshops, however, lower material grades and relax quality control to cut costs and chase profit. They may use prohibited industrial-grade raw materials, auxiliaries, additives or recycled materials, causing hygiene and physicochemical indicators such as evaporation residue and heavy metals to exceed limits. Products can suffer weak load-bearing capacity and strength, visible impurities, odour and easy tearing. If heavy metals, paraffin wax, talc and other harmful substances leach into food, they can damage health, cause chronic poisoning and, in serious cases, cancer, birth defects or mutations.

The second factor is an unclear standards system. Companies making single-use non-foamed plastic tableware may follow GB9688—1988, the Hygienic Standard for Polypropylene Moulded Products for Food Packaging. Because it is a hygiene standard without use-performance indicators, it does not allow comprehensive testing or overall quality evaluation. If they cite GB18006.1—1999, General Technical Conditions for Single-Use Degradable Tableware, it cannot simply be applied to non-degradable products. A survey by the Beijing Environmental Protection Tableware Alliance found that more than half of China’s single-use tableware enterprises have no production standard to follow or do not follow the standard they have.

Under the new review requirements, if no national or industry standard can be directly applied, companies must have experts draft an enterprise standard, file it locally, and test products against that standard as soon as possible; otherwise, QS application is impossible. PVC cling film is already widely used in the market but has no national or industry standard and was not included among the 39 products for certification this time, creating hidden risks for its development.

The access regime is tightening the quality gate.

At the end of August, AQSIQ will investigate and penalize unlicensed production of products within the access scope. Licensed enterprises may produce normally. Enterprises that have not obtained a license must mark products as 'trial products' and may only ship them for sale after passing inspection by a designated testing institution. Enterprises that have not submitted a review application may not produce, distributors may not deal in, and food producers may not use their products. Selling or using listed products without a production license will lead to fines of RMB 50,000 to 200,000, confiscation of illegal gains, or criminal liability under law. State-prohibited items such as single-use foamed plastic tableware will be fully eliminated and may not be certified, produced, sold or used.

To advance market access, AQSIQ established four review departments in Beijing, Jinan, Hangzhou and Guangzhou, designated eight testing institutions and trained a group of reviewers. Given the large number of small, poorly managed producers with uneven quality in China, supervision will support some enterprises to grow stronger, guide quality-unstable producers to improve, shut down and eliminate those without quality assurance, and crack down on illegal dens specializing in counterfeit and shoddy products.

This year, quality inspection supervision highlights four priorities: priority products—additives, packaging, containers, tools and other items with a major impact on food safety; priority regions—areas with concentrated production, where authorities will work closely with local governments to steadily improve most companies’ quality; priority enterprises—small firms and workshops lacking quality assurance, plus operations and dens making inferior products; and priority issues—food-additive abuse, use of toxic or harmful non-food raw materials in food processing, and illegal use of recycled plastics to make food packaging containers and tools.

Once the food-packaging market-access system takes effect, it should raise the industry’s overall level at the root and directly seal quality gaps in packaging.

Mandatory QS production licensing will reshuffle food-packaging enterprises into three broad groups. About one third, basically large companies with sound management systems and compliant product quality, will obtain QS licenses easily. Another third, with imperfect management and unstable quality, will face rectification and higher management costs. The final third, with chaotic management, outdated technology and extremely poor quality, will find it very difficult to obtain a QS license even after rectification and will face elimination.

Based on the Beijing Kaifa Environmental Protection Technology Consulting Center’s inspections of many enterprises and the relevant certification requirements, three recommendations are offered. First, production-enterprise leaders must give the issue high priority, track policy changes and certification requirements in time, and prepare early to ensure enough time for rectification and review. Second, they should not rely on luck; they must rectify strictly according to the 53 items in the general review rules and detailed rules and, under expert and professional guidance, fundamentally change the past loose model with unstable quality—for consumers’ health and the company’s long-term development. Third, food-packaging operators should actively seek lawful suppliers and choose products from licensed enterprises to prevent a too-slow switch from hurting their business.

— Source: China Packaging Network (pack.cn); original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-362336.html