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Souce: http://info.21cp.com/industry/News/201609/1185607.htm

Recently, the European Commission announces new regulation (EU)2016/1416, which is the sixth amendment for the plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food regulation (EU)10/2011. The new regulation would take effect after 14^th September with no buffer period. Products that does not comply with the new regulations, but meets the standards of the old (EU)10/2011 regulation, could be continued on the market for stock clearance until 14^th September, 2017.

Judging by the new regulations, we could see the major concerns of the EU towards the standards of plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food.

According to the professionals, the main amendments are as follows:

1. Renewed the definitions of “Non-fat foods” and “Specific”, added the definition of “Hot-filling”.
2. Renewed articles 6(3)(a), 11(3), 13(3), 17(3)(a), 18(4), 18(7); added article 11(4), deleted article 11(2) – requirement of “Using the specific migration limit of 60mg/kg for non-standardized substances”
3. Revision of Appendix I and the addition of substances limit; Revision of Appendix II – addition of the permitted migration limit of Aluminium, lowering the permitted migration limit of Zinc, revising the description of the total volume or singular limit of Aromatic amine; and the updated heavy metal migration limits could be found in the attached tables.
4. Revision of Appendix III – Standardization of type D2 food stimulants as “Non-saponifiable substances which contains less than 1% of plant oil”;
5. Revision of Appendix V– Refinement of high-temperature testing requirements, added two temperature gradient simulations of temperatures higher than 175℃, added of “hot-filling” situations into possible utilized methods.

Exported products expecting increased challenges and risks

From the above revisions, we could see that the EU has high concerns towards the safety of plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food; regulations of migrant substance limits were tightened, and especially the revision of “Addition of the possible ‘hot-filling’ situations”, which significantly increased the technical standards in terms of the product’s different properties, such as: heat resistance, structure and ingredients stability, and the potential release of toxic substances; posing a greater challenge and risk to the safety of such exported products.

According to the statistics; exported food contact products has a relatively higher non-compliant rate. Until August 29, the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) of the EU reported 159 issues of Chinese products, of those 61 issues were Food Contact products, which is 40% of the total issues reported, and especially plastic products, which account for 28 issues alone, about 20%. Reasons mainly were harmful substances released exceeding standards of the EU or its member countries.