Making your own soap product is the best thing ever, especially when that soap product is guaranteed safe.
Regardless of whether you make moulded soap, produce liquid soap, mix bath salts, use our soap machine to make soap bars or apply the Cold Process Method, you want to create soap products that meet the highest standards when it comes to quality, hygiene, and safety. Products that also comply with strict European Cosmetics regulations.
That’s because all soap makers – both big and small – must observe the European Hygiene and Cosmetics Regulation. This is for the protection of anyone who uses your soap products. Your production methods, processes, ingredients, and soap products must – now and in the future – comply with this regulation. When you as a soap maker sign up to the affordable EU Soap Quality System (SQS), you are guaranteed to meet these requirements.
The (online) SQS system handles everything on behalf of soap makers. It records all relevant data and saves it in the right place. The system also generates labels that contain all the required data. And you have access to more than a million (!) soap recipes and get priority when it comes to ordering, advice, and special offers. To sum it up, you – as an SQS soap maker – are in the safest of hands.
But… what if you’d prefer to handle all of this yourself?
That’s an option of course, but it’s extremely time-consuming and expensive for individual soap makers to arrange all processes in such a way that they comply with the regulation. Ensuring compliance with the legal conditions on your own will cost you thousands every year. And we aren’t exaggerating. If you want to do it all yourself, you’ll need the right certification. You’ll also have to compile a product dossier and perform a risk analysis, in addition to making sure that your production area complies, that your production methods are correct and that your labels are accurate. All of this before making sure that each of your recipes creates products that contain allergen levels below the limits that apply to you.
To do this, you’ll have to find someone who is willing and qualified. This would generally be a pharmacologist or chemist. Such a person, who would usually charge between €1,000 and €1,500 per recipe, must then agree to be held accountable for your soap. Then hopefully, regulations for the ingredients that you use don’t change. If they do, you’ll have to modify your recipe and again call on your chemist for verification, after which he or she will simply charge you again. In addition, you’ll be required to hand over your product data to the regulators, who may ask you tricky questions about your soap products, processes, and production area.
So, that is why. That’s why it’s much smarter and cost-effective to become a member of the EU Soap Quality System. The quality system takes all the hassle off your hands so that you can focus on what you’d rather do: make soap.
EU Soap Quality System (SQS)
Hofmanweg 41
2031 BH Haarlem The Netherlands
Member of