Cleaning Products and Labelling Obligations

When products are advertised, the corresponding legal requirements must be complied with in order to avoid misleading consumers and thus breaching competition law – this also applies to cleaning products. In particular, the CLP Regulation (Classification, Labelling and Packaging) must be observed.

A company that manufactures cleaning products for commercial and industrial cleaning and hygiene advertised its products with the claim that they were exempt from labelling under the CLP Regulation. There were no warnings on the corresponding labels regarding the risk of skin or eye damage.

A competing company saw this as a breach of competition law and obtained an interim injunction against the advertising company.

The interim injunction was upheld by the Regional Court (LG) Frankfurt. The advertising company appealed against this – without success.

The Court's Decision

The Higher Regional Court (OLG) Frankfurt a.M. also upheld this in its judgment of 07.07.2016 – Az. 6 U 227/15, confirming that the advertised products are hazardous mixtures within the meaning of the CLP Regulation and that health hazards emanate from them. Accordingly, these products must also be labelled.

Given the pH value of the advertised products of 0.5, on the one hand skin-corrosive properties are presumed. The company was unable to rebut this presumption. On the other hand, there is a risk of eye damage or eye irritation.

The withholding of the corresponding labelling misleads consumers and is therefore contrary to competition law.

Conclusion

Before advertising products without the corresponding labelling or even with a claim that labelling is not required, this should be reviewed from a legal perspective.