Homemade Soap buisiness

[kirstikids]

Hi
Does anyone know this?
I am interested in having my own home made soap/ bath bomb buisiness. At first just selling on fete stalls etc.
But wondered if I need a certificate of toxicoligy(sp) or anything been as I am using cosmetic and oils.
Not sure where to find this info either.
Thanks

I'd imagine you would at least need product liability insurance and presumably there are regulations over ingredients and labelling

dunno, but that sounds cool!

i used to make soap for fun, but only plain ol' creamy castile stuff.

my gran knew how to make lye. whoa.

As far as I am aware you need to have a safety assessment on your product, carried out by a lab. I think with soaps you can sometimes get them to certify your base with a number of the additives & fragrance/EOs at the same time. I have no idea about bath bombs I'm afraid. If using frangrance oils you have to provide a letter from your supplier confirming that they comply to certain regulations. Once you have your safety assessment which looks at all the ingredients you are using and the labels to ensure that they comply with EU Regs (ie check that ingredients are stated in correct way, contact details, state the allergens that are required to be stated if you use over a certain amount), then you have to compile a Product Information File. This has to be available on request to anyone who asks and has to have certain information in it eg details of your manufacturing process, suppliers of each product with batch number, the material data safety sheet. You have to record each batch of soap you make so there is full tracablity of ingredients. Also there are issues with the scales you use, I think they have to be Trading Standards stamped. You will also need insurance - Ian Wallace of craftinsurance.co.uk is very reasonably priced. I think you also have to register the address you make the soap from with your local environmental health department (could be wrong about this).

I'm going through all this as I've started making my own products to sell (not soap though so not completely up on that). There is loads of red tape you have to get through in order to get through to be able to legally sell your own products. It's very hard work but not impossible. I think with soaps there are supposed to be some pre-certified melt and pour bases that you can get, though I've seen some debate about whether they are actually valid. Any products used on a child less than 3 years old has additional requirements that have to be satisfied during the safety assessement. Sorry if that all sounds rather a lot !

Thanks kittypickle, thats great, although seems a bit hard to me. Wonder why I can't find any info on web? At least I know now.
might just stick to making them for family and friends!!!!

It is all out there but you have to dig around for ages to get it all together. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Trading standards office might be able to give specific advice. Certainly public liability is a must.

Some info but they are selling their package}, lots of other info on the site too.

\link{http://www.thesoapkitchen.co.uk/\Links on the left hand side have quite a bit of info.

Links

Wow
Thanks skribble. Thats a great help!!!!