What Is TPD Notification — and Who Handles It When You Outsource Production?
Every e-liquid sold legally in the European Union has been through the same gate. Before a product reaches a shelf, it must be notified to the authorities — with its full ingredient list, emissions data and toxicological information — and it must sit in that system for six months before it can be sold.
Most brand owners know the requirement exists. Fewer know exactly what it involves, and fewer still know who carries the responsibility once production is outsourced. That last question is the one that causes problems.
What is TPD notification?
The Tobacco Products Directive (2014/40/EU) sets the rules for e-cigarettes and refill containers across the EU. Article 20 requires that manufacturers and importers submit a notification for every product before placing it on the market of any member state.
The submission goes through the EU Common Entry Gateway (EU-CEG), a central electronic system. Each member state then accesses the data for products intended for its market.
Crucially, notification is per product, per market. A single e-liquid available in five countries is five separate notifications to keep valid and up to date.
What information does a notification actually require?
More than most people expect. A complete submission includes:
Full ingredient list with quantities, for each flavour and each nicotine strength
Toxicological data on the ingredients, particularly when heated and inhaled
Emissions data from the product in use
Nicotine dose and uptake information
Details of the production process and a declaration of full responsibility for product quality and safety
Manufacturer and importer identification data
Packaging and labelling that meets the directive's requirements
This is why notification is not an administrative afterthought. It requires the underlying laboratory work to exist first — and the data to be consistent with what is actually in the bottle.
How long does it take?
The regulation sets a six-month standstill period: the product cannot be placed on the market until six months have passed from a complete submission. Preparing the submission itself takes additional time, depending on how much of the required testing already exists for the formula.
In practice, a brand planning a launch works backwards from the intended launch date and treats notification as one of the first steps, not one of the last. Products that are formulated, produced and only then notified sit in a warehouse for half a year.
Who is legally responsible — the brand or the manufacturer?
This is the question worth getting right in writing.
Under the directive, the obligation falls on the manufacturer or the importer placing the product on the market. In a contract manufacturing arrangement, that role depends on how the relationship is structured: in some setups the producer submits under its own responsibility, in others the brand owner is the notifying party and the producer supplies the underlying data.
Both models are workable. What causes problems is ambiguity — a brand assuming the producer "took care of it", a producer assuming the brand submitted, and a shipment that cannot legally move.
Before production starts, agree explicitly:
Who is the notifying party in each target market?
Who owns and maintains the submission data if the relationship ends?
Who updates the notification when the formula, packaging or nicotine strength changes?
Who monitors regulatory changes in each market?
What happens when a product changes?
Any substantive modification — a reformulated flavour, a new nicotine strength, a different bottle size, revised labelling — is treated as a new or amended notification. Brands that iterate quickly can find that their compliance workload grows faster than their catalogue.
This is a practical argument for consolidating: a producer that already holds and maintains your submission data can process changes far faster than a chain of separate specialists coordinating by email.
Does notification alone mean I can sell?
No. Notification is one of several requirements, and it is the product-level one. Alongside it sit national excise obligations, which are entirely separate and handled through different channels. A product can be correctly notified and still be unable to move, because the tax side has not been arranged.
That is why market entry is best understood as two parallel tracks — regulatory and fiscal — that both have to be complete before a product reaches a shelf.
Labss prepares and submits TPD documentation for partner brands and handles the fiscal side through our own authorised warehouse in Greece — so both tracks run in parallel rather than in sequence. Tell us about your product and target markets, and we will come back with a realistic timeline.
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