CRPT “Honest Sign” shared the interim results of work in the field of dietary supplement labeling. In particular, the real volumes of the bioactive additives market were revealed: importers of these products turned out to be five times more than the state knew, and manufacturers – 41% more. This was told to GxP News by the press service of the CRPT.

It is clarified that more than 14.7 thousand participants in the dietary supplement turnover have been registered in the labeling system, of which 1128 are manufacturers and 1041 are importers. “Previously, there was one right way to estimate the number of importers and manufacturers of dietary supplements – comparing data on issued certificates of state registration, which are stored in the unified register of the EEC. Regarding the import of such certificates, there are about 200, and five times more people with the role of “importer” have already been registered in the labeling system,” the CRPT said.

The problem is that when assessing the number of market participants based on the issued certificates of state registration, it is impossible to take into account parallel imports. “When implementing such a supply channel, the actual importer does not need to obtain a certificate of state registration, he uses a document issued to a foreign company, which significantly reduces the number of identifiable recipients of permits, and, therefore, the final data give only a partial idea of the number of participants in the turnover. Therefore, the authorities focused on much smaller market volumes,” explained Egor Zhavoronkov, head of the Pharma commodity group of the CRPT, specifying that the situation with manufacturers of dietary supplements is similar.

He also explained that the practice of “contract production” is common in the dietary supplements market, when products under different brands are produced on the same site. When the brand owner orders a turnkey dietary supplement production service, the contract site can issue a certificate of state registration on its own, and then no mention of the brand owner will appear either in the permits or in the EEC.

According to Zhavoronkov, thanks to the introduction of mandatory labeling of dietary supplements, participants in the turnover “come out of the shadows”, and “with the start of each new labeling stage, an objective picture of the volumes of the dietary supplements market itself is formed.” Now it is possible to estimate both the real number of participants in the turnover and the actual volumes of imports, production and consumption of these products in Russia.

Source: gxpnews.net