What is the FPR?

From summer 2022 onwards, fertilizer producers, traders and farmers will be confronted with the EU Fertilizing Products Regulation (FPR), which will radically change the way fertilizers are receiving the CE mark and the labelling requirements provided on the products.

From now the future, its possible to market, within the EU, a very wide range of fertilizing products such as organic fertilizers, organo-mineral fertilizers, growing media and crucially biostimulants – provided that they comply with the environmental and safety requirements of the new legislation.

Under the new legislation specific procedures will have to be followed depending on what the product is made of and under which category it would be put on the market. The 2003/2003 Regulation was regulating only the characteristics of the final product in a very precise way such as nutrient levels. The FPR will be regulating both the end characteristics (contaminants, nutrient levels) as well as the input materials contained in every fertilizing product (e.g. REACH registration). In doing so the FPR has a pragmatic and open approach. 

The new Regulation establishes a common legal framework for so called 'fertilizing products' (see above), and creates a procedure for accessing the market. This is the so called “conformity assessment”, i.e. a process demonstrating whether specified requirements relating to a fertilising product are fulfilled.

The FPR defines a 'fertilising product' as:

• a substance, mixture, micro-organism or any other material which:

  • is applied on plants or their rhizosphere or on mushrooms or their mycosphere, or

  • constitutes the rhizosphere or mycosphere, either on its own or mixed with another material and has as a purpose:

    • to provide plants or mushrooms with nutrient

    • improve their nutrition efficiency. 

• Fertilising products include fertilisers (which provide plants with nutrients), but also other categories of products (such as inhibitors, liming materials or growing media). For more details on the products concerned, see question 7.1.

The FPR will exist in parallel to national legislation and mutual recognition as it is only creating an optional harmonization. It will therefore be up to a manufacturer to decide whether it applies for a CE mark to benefit from free circulation in the EU’s internal market. Manufacturers of fertilizers that do not bear the CE marking will still have the open doors to place the fertilizers on their national market.

There is however now 1 legislation that you can use to sell throughout the EU. Using the FPR also means you no longer need to use National Registration of every country you want to sell in.

An additional actor in the new FPR will be the Notified Bodies, which are considered as a conformity assessment body officially designated by an EU authority to carry out the procedures for conformity assessment within the meaning of the FPR. This is done through Modules. 

EFCI Register is a Notified Body for the FPR for Module B and Module D1. 

All the Notified Bodies will be listed in a public database on the internet (called NANDO).