Hi everyone!  I have been making soaps for about a year now after taking voluntary redundancy from a secondary school.  I am now so much more relaxed, until I start talking about soap then I become far too excited!!  i am hoping to start up my own small business, v small, and have finally decided on a base recipe and essential oils smells.  The reason I joined this forum is I am hoping to gain some knowledge on getting registered and filling in my PIF etc.  I have mailed Scott Grainger and his team about getting a licence but feel a little overwhelmed about the other stuff that I need.  Can a PIF take any format as long as it includes the necessary stuff outlined on and do all UK sellers need to be registered with the EU portal??  Debs

Hello and welcome.

Yes, you still have to upload to the portal. It is not too difficult, just a bit of a pain.

Scott and his team are very helpful, and you will find lots of information here. I don't think there is a set format for the PIF, as long as you have all the required information. If you take it step by step it is not too bad. Start keeping records of all ingredient batch codes, and creating batch numbers for the batches you make, write a GMP document and you are well on your way.

Good luck.

Hello Debs, welcome to the forum.

You might occasionally see a new post from Scott on one of the boards; there are some of his useful posts pinned in various boards - he became a member some time before he became an assessor !

Hi Debs!!   

A very warm welcome to the forum.  It all sounds like you have made the right choice for you, to go down a route that seems to make you happy.  Good for you Debs  :buttrf: :buttrf:

Hi Debs  :buttrf: :buttrf:

Hi - thanks for all the welcomes!!
Got a question for Suzanne -  what is a GMP document?
and batch numbers - this is something I have to get my head round - do I start literally with batch 1 for each recipe then make a note of the finer details of that soap , so who I bought the ingredients from? Then the next time I make that same soap it is batch 2 and if I changed supplier I make a note???
 Thanks in advance
Debs

Belated welcome from me. I somehow missed this

 

The admin side is a bit of a pain, but once you do it once it gets easier.

GMP is basically Good Manufacturing Practice. I think there is something on here somewhere.

Yes, you have to keep track of batch details for all your ingredients for each batch. If you have something like somemaker, it does that all for you. You can call you batch number anything I used some letters to represent the product, then numbers ( You can do YYMMDD). So for example SPLAV170216 (to represent Soap Lavender made 16/Feb/17)

that was meant to be SoapMaker which is a bit of software, but you can use spreadsheet.

Pretty much yes. Each batch you make needs a unique batch number. As Andy says you can make it up yourself, but I use Soapmaker which does it for you. It also keeps a record of the ingredient batch numbers, and you can pull up a batch of your product and it will show you the supplier of each ingredient and the batch number of the particular ingredients used. This also forms part of your Product Info File. If there is a problem, or Trading Standards visit, then you have a complete paper trail. It is also good for keeping an eye on your stock. You can use it for soap, lotion and potions, candles or whatever you are making.

oops sorry, was answering for Suzanne  :mwaha:

Feel free, you make more sense than I do.

Hi,

good luck with your new business.  I'm also just about to send off for my safety assessment, just as soon as I've made my final decision on what form the recipes will take. It is a hard decision to take!