May 04, 2018

It’s high time for the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) sector. As of 21 April 2018, after a two-year transition period, the old EU directive that regulated the manufacturing and marketing of PPE is going to be repealed by the new Regulation.

In order to smoothen the impact of the changes related to the new regulatory regime, the European Commission has published yesterday, 3 May 2018, the new guidelines for the implementation of PPE Regulation (EU) 2016/425. The ultimate goal of this document is to help ensure the free movement of PPE in the EU by providing a common interpretation on practical issues such as the CE marking of products, certification procedure,Replica Handbags categorization of PPE and much more.

Since the beginning of 2018, SBS joined the restricted group of industry and Member States representatives that worked on the document. The results were positive and immediate as the new PPE guidelines, in contrast to the ones under the old Directive, will refer and provide help also to textile care services (e.g. laundry, dry cleaning, rental) that are fundamental to ensure safety and quality of products. For instance, the document instructs manufacturers not only to provide information on cleaning and disinfection processes that are necessary to ensure the hygiene of products, but also to specify their period of obsolescence in light, for example, of the number of washing cycles after which the protective function of products is still valid.

Textile care services ensure supply, reprocessing and sterilisation of PPE such as reusable protective clothing, their product traceability and integrated logistics management. It is estimated that some 15.000 textile care companies operate in the EU, with approximately 220.000 jobs directly or indirectly linked to this industry which is mostly made by small enterprises generally operating at local level in a rapidly expanding market. For this reason, the formal recognition of textile care reprocessors among the categories of stakeholders affected by the provisions of the PPE Regulation is crucial to ensure safety and quality requirements demanded on the market.

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This article has been written in the Best Replica Watches framework of the 2018 Sectoral Approach of Small Business Standards (SBS) on PPE and Textile Care. SBS (www.sbs-sme.eu) is the association supporting European SMEs in standardisation and is co-financed by the European Commission and EFTA.

For more information, please contact Guido Sabatini, SME Safety Project Manager, at g.sabatini@sme-safety.eu