Name: Are Your Water Products EU MHR Ready? Prepare now to avoid delays & risks.
Uploaded: 2026-04-23T09:00:28.095Z
Duration: 1 h 16 s
Description: Are Your Water Products EU MHR Ready? Prepare now to avoid delays & risks.

Transcript for "Are Your Water Products EU MHR Ready? Prepare now to avoid delays & risks.": Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar on is your water product EUMHR ready. We hope that by the end of the webinar, you will feel confident in starting your EU MHR compliance journey with NSF. A few quick housekeeping announcements before we begin. All participants have been muted to minimize background noise. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to use the chat to interact. Please note that the session is being recorded and will be shared with participants afterwards. Also, you can download the brochures on EUMHR from the docs tab in the chat. Moving on, we are pleased to welcome miss Samantha Duffy as our speaker today. Samantha is a senior manager for global water programs at NSF and also oversee the EU and UK certification seats. Without further delay, I'd like to invite Samantha to take the virtual stage and guide us through today's presentation. Over to you, Sam. Thank you, Nipper. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. I just would like to start by just briefly explaining what the agenda is. For those that aren't familiar with NSF, we'll have a few moments to introduce who we are and what we do. I'm gonna be focusing on the EU drinking water directive, which we refer to as EU MHR, stands for the minimum hygienic requirements. And what we will talk through there is what our certification strategies are that you need to be considering, what pre assessment is, what protocol p five three four with an overall summary. So I will start today by diving into this topic of EU and HR. But as we do, let's look at who we are as an organization. So NSF began the journey in The United States as the National Sanitation Foundation. We were originally part of the University of Michigan, and our initial mission was clear. It was to establish standardized sanitation food and safety requirements. But over time, we evolved into an independent not for profit organization, and we adopted the name NSF International, later simplified to NSF, as you see us referred to today. To reflect our broader scope and global reach. Today, we're a mission driven organization committed to improving human and planetary health working in food, water, and health sciences. And this mission is powered by a diverse team of scientists, engineers, health professional, auditors, territory account executives, and project managers who all work together to ensure your needs are met. To give you a sense of our size, we've been operating for more than eight years. NSF has been delivering these services to all of our clients so that you can rely on a quality product and service. If we look back at 2024, we operated in over a 110 countries. We supported more than 40,000 client sites. We've certified over 657,000 products, and we've completed over 300,000 audits. All of this made possible by a dedicated team of over 3,000 professionals. And this is why we believe what we're gonna talk about today, we can do with confidence because we have the experience to do this. Although we began in The United States, as you can see on this slide, we've grown into a truly global organization. We operate across five distinct regions, supported by more than 40 offices and laboratories worldwide. Obviously, in each country, there are differences in regulations, working practices, time zones, and language challenges. And that's why our team isn't centralized. We're embodied within the regions we serve. We operate on a matrix structure, so we have expertise across each of our different standards. And then we have localized regional teams who are trained on all standards to provide and deliver that expertise locally. And they're all multilingual people. So they're, they're able to help and understand in your own markets. Just a few examples here of standards that you may already recognize that we offer such as the USM sixty and sixty one standards, which covers health effects. We also provide certifications such as regulation four for The UK water supply, water fittings regs. We also do national certificates in Europe for, KTW, UVA for Germany, and ACS for France. We have our own facilities, but we also partner with others as and when required. So we're able to offer you a true advantage of a passport global market. Now let's be honest. Building a brand new water lab doesn't happen overnight, and we've been planning for this along with the EU MHL standard for five to six years now. So this isn't something that we've just decided to do. And what I need you to think about today as I go through this presentation is how prepared are you for EU MHR compliance? If you haven't started to think about it, you really need to start thinking about it now because the time is moving quickly, and this is a complex standard. My biggest takeaway will be for you today is you need to start now. Do not delay. And on that, I will move through and talk through what the implications are. So how can you prepare? Excuse me. So to know where you're going, you really need to understand where we're coming from. So the European single market consists of 448,000,000 people, and it's considered the largest harmonized market in the world. This has been the case for a lot of products, but not all. And there are some differences between member states. Now we've been talking about this globally for over twenty years, and a lot of people are very skeptical as to whether this is gonna happen, and we will become a harmonized standard. What I can confirm is that the train has left the station. We're on that journey. This is now a legal requirement from the 01/01/2027, and it comes under article 11 of the drinking water directive. So if you're going to go away and read the drinking water directive, you really need to focus on article 11. What it means is that all of those member states going forward will no longer have their national certificates. It has become a harmonized standard through the drinking water directive. There are numerous sections to the drinking water directive, various delegating acts. And as I say, you need to be focusing on article 11. What it will mean is when you get your EU MHR certification, that one standard is accepted everywhere across all 27 member states. There is going to be a transition period, and I will go on to explain that in the next slide. But once you have that certification, you'll see the mark on the right hand side of the screen with the tap and the drinking glass. This will be the new mark that you put on your products to show that it is compliant to the EU drinking water directive through EU MHR. So if we look at the time frames here, the new law becomes mandatory for new products on the 01/01/2027. If you hold a national certificate that is valid on the 12/31/2026, So I'm talking, for example, ACS for France or UBA for Germany. You are able to continue selling to the country that recognizes that certification, so not all 27 member states, until a maximum period of 2032. Now those certificates are valid for five years. So if that current certificate that is valid on the 12/31/2026 is due to expire in, for example, 2029, as long as nothing has changed, we can look at extending that certificate until the 2032. But it means for the investment that you've made in in extending that certificate, you would only get an additional three years worth of use out of it rather than the traditional five years. If your certificate is not valid on the 12/31/2026, then you cannot reapply. So here on this, you can see a couple of examples of, strategies that you should really consider. So as you can see in strategy two here, ACS, would be valid past the deadline so you can continue to use it. But sorry. It isn't extended past the deadline, and you would need to have EU and HR compliance. Whereas in strategy one here, it is valid, and it can be renewed, and you can continue to use it. So the key message here is that if you do not have a national certificate valid on the 12/31/2026, it cannot be gained after the that January 1 deadline. We stop producing any new new certifications. If you have a certificate now that is due to expire before the 01/31/2026, you can renew it now. But what I need to inform you is if you are in that situation so for example, your ACS certificate may expire this September 2026, you need to be aware that there is no guarantee that a renewal would be complete by the end of this year. So you really need to think about, is it worth you trying to renew your national certificate now, or should you start with EU and HR so that when yours your certificate does eventually run out, your you would if it ended in September, you would have a gap between September and January of next year. So you need to be mindful of that. But from next year, you'd be able to then sell to all member states under EU NHR. If you're not comfortable with having that gap of no compliance between September and the end of the year because, obviously, you can't sell, and that's gonna impact your business and you want to extend your current ACS certificate, you need to get that renewed now. And that's, as I say, where the risk lies. Because if you've changed any ingredients, if you have changed any comp components, then we can't guarantee how long that testing is going to take, whether the testing will pass, whether it will fail, and we don't know how cooperative your suppliers are going to be. If it's a product that is already certified that expires in September and nothing has changed, then it could be, you know, fairly simple just to renew that certificate. So my advice would be go and have a look to see what you currently have when things expire. Have those internal discussions to understand. Has anything changed? You know, the ingredients, the parts. What do you need to do? And you can decide how to move forward. There are going to be no new product applications accepted for ACS after the end of this month. So if you currently don't have ACS certification and you were thinking of going for ACS certification, you need to do that now before the end of this month. And that's because we're starting from the very beginning. It's a brand new product to be assessed under ACS. And as I say, the time frame means that we may not complete it by the end of the year. So we've had to put a deadline on these. The same is said with UBA. If you have a UBA project and you want it renewed and nothing has changed, then it could be quicker and it's likely it would be achievable by the end of the year. We still can't guarantee. But the sooner you work on it, the better. If it is a brand new product to be certified under UBA, then we are not going to be accepting those new applications after the May 15 this year. So that's the 05/15/2026. So please go away and really look at your products and what your strategy is going to be. As I've already stated, article 11 in short, it's the most important concept in this sentence is the word final material. So when we're looking at EUMHR, it is only final materials that fall under this regulation. The final material is the final shape and form. So a O ring, for example, a valve, the assembled product. They are the final materials. What EU MHR does not cover is raw materials, pre products. And I will come on to explain how that impacts you and what you can do with those further in the presentation. But what I will do now is just expand a little bit to help you understand the language that is being used in EUMHR. So these are the product and material definitions, and this section clarifies the different stages and forms of items used in the water systems. So products refer to finished items, as I've already said, intended for use in water systems. For example, plastic pipes and fittings and o rings, things I've already said. An assembled product, you know, a product composed of multiple parts and assembled together. Now one of the differences, for example, for EU MHR compared to, ACS is on ACS. It's the whole assembled product that is tested. And EUMHR, we have to look at the whole assembled product for every single component, and this is why it is so different. What I can say to you is that EU MHR has been built on the basis of UBA. So there are some similarities, but there are differences as we move forward with EU MHR from UBA. We have here, for example, as we continue through this slide, examples of multilayer products. We have tubing components, smaller smaller parts as I've already explained. Brass fittings metals are very challenging under EU MHR, and I can confirm that the testing of those can take considerably longer to complete. So, again, if you have metal components, we really do need to think about looking at these products at the earliest opportunity possible. Now one of the big differences around EU MHR compared to national standards is that the assessments are based on risk groups. And this is coming from the implementing decisions from table one that you can see on the screen. And it's probably the most important thing because it summarizes the testing and acceptance right requirements. So I'm going to just explain briefly what this means. So according to the acts that supplement Article 11, we test a product by testing its individual parts, as I've already explained. Each part or component consists of one out of four materials, so organic, cementitious, ceramics, or metals. And each part is categorized into four risk groups, r g one to r g four, or product groups if it's a metal, so a, b, c, and d. Now the risk group is determined by the conversion factor of a part, And the conversion factor is the wetted surface of a component related to the volume of the water that that part's exposed to. Now you can imagine, for example, an O ring is gonna be completely different to a pipe. The risk group, which depends on the determinants, of the for the test requirements of an o ring will normally be classed as, for example, a risk group three, whereas a pipe would be in risk groups one or two, for example. Now what that also means is that there could be further tests required. It also means that there could be a requirement for an initial audit where we have to do sample selection, and our auditors would have to come in and select those samples. But we don't know this until we have reviewed your products. And this is why it is so important that you provide all of the necessary information for us to be able to make the correct assessment for the risk groups because that is what affects the test plans and the requirements going forward. Now you could be saying to yourself, okay. You're Sam, you're talking about we need to start thinking about this, and we need to be starting this now. So what can we do? As I've said, it doesn't become mandatory. It doesn't become law until the 01/01/2027. And what that means from a certification body, so from NSF's perspective, for us to be able to provide this service for you going forward, and this is the same for all 35 bodies, we need to have two key accreditations. One is seventeen oh six five accreditation, which allows us to issue you the certificate and allows us to list you. And then the other one is 17 o two five, which is the accreditation that allows us to do the testing. Now no certification body can actually issue a certificate until this becomes law. So it is on the 01/01/2027 that we can start to look at issuing certificates. However, there is another requirement, which is where every future certified body, and I say future because we can't do it until the 01/01/2027. So that's why we're all referred to as the future, certifying bodies or future notified bodies. We need to gain notified body status. And nobody, none of the certifying bodies are able to gain that notified body status at the moment. That is something that the EU Commission is still organizing and is still to confirm how that will be awarded. What I can say is that in Belgium, which is where we operate this scheme from, we are ahead of other countries, and we already know who that notifying authority is going to be. So we can we we're already ahead of the game. We're already in the process of discussions about gaining that notified body status as soon as, is possible, as soon as that deadline that deadline hits. But what this doesn't mean is that we can't start the process. And so we've called this pre assessment. And I've tried to demonstrate this visually for you. For anybody who currently works with us, for any of our other standards, so for example, NSF 61 in The US, you'll be familiar with what we refer to as the seven steps to certification. Under EUM HR, we have followed the same principles because we want to make life easier for you. We don't want you to have to follow one process for one standard and a different process for another. But what we can do under EUM HR pre assessment is we can conduct the first five steps. So these steps that the arrow are showing here. So we can receive your application. We can review it. We can explain the process to you. We can give you that dedicated project manager to to work with you. We can do the technical review so we can make the assessment of the risk groups. We can define what the tests are that are required. And obviously we'll, we can give you the the cost estimates for all of these. We can even start the testing. Once the testing is completed, that is when we have to pause. We have to hold that information until after the 01/01/2027 when we become the notified body. At that point, our cert decider will pick up all of that information, all of the the test results, all of the formulation review, all of the supplier information. They will check with you to make sure nothing has changed. And as long as nothing has changed, we can then certify, and we can list you on our portal, just like we would for all the other standards that we operate. So your listing would fall into the NSF portal, and you'd be able to see that. And everything would come under NSF connect for those that are familiar with that or online system. And we will be able to give you this mark for your products. Depending on the risk group, if it is a risk group one and two, excuse me, we have to audit annually. So in 2027, we would have to do another audit because the first audit was done in 2026. Excuse me. That doesn't stop us issuing your certificate. This would be after the issue of the certificate to ensure compliance continues in 2027. We would also have to do some testing to ensure compliance continues in 2027. But that would be at our discretion because we are doing all of this ourselves. And because we have done the formulation review, we have all of the data, we've got all of that information. We do not necessarily have to do all of the tests, and that is something that our technical review team would make a decision on. So the key message here is pre assessment. You need to start thinking about starting this now because pre assessment alone can take six to eight months. I will be honest with you and say the biggest challenge is your suppliers. We're already still doing pre assessment for clients. We're seeing this already. You know this from other standards that you've had certified where you're relying on suppliers and maybe even suppliers' suppliers. We chase them as part of our process, but we also need you to be thinking about the suppliers that you use, about using your, power, if you like, in when you select those suppliers and using that by engaging with those suppliers in advance, warning them that NSF are going to come to them for information. And that it's critical that that information, is provided to us in a timely manner because it's gonna prevent you from gaining your accreditation. Think about reducing the number of suppliers that you use to ones that you know are are are going to be cooperative. You need to have a think about how can you make this process go quicker. As I've already said, pre products, granulates, site applied materials do not come under EU MHR. It's a gap in the regulations that we at NSF have identified. And that is a problem because one of the things, in fact, I haven't mentioned it already, is the other things that we need to consider under EU and HR is that products need to be on, the positive list, and that's what our technical team will review and check. All of these pre products and granulates are not on these positive lists. They're not covered. So it's how do we get the information for these pre products? So we have created something called, p five three four. And what p five three four is is it's a protocol. That's what the p stands for. So it is not mandatory. It's voluntary. But you can introduce this concept to your suppliers. So your supplier of that raw material could gain a p five three four certificate for that raw material. And we can provide that, and we assess that raw material to all of the principles of EUMHR. And then once that raw material has passed, so we would need to test their raw materials. Once it's passed, we issue that certificate. Your raw material provider could then give you that certificate. And then when you get your product certified, it speeds up the process time and also reduces your costs because we do not have to then test that raw material that is in your product. So it's gonna save you time and it's gonna save you money. Okay? I will just move on from this slide. It basically just explains, the types of materials that fall under p five three four, but we've already said that's the pre products and granulates. But what I will show you is this visual here to show you how pre product certification fits into the pre assessment. So if you think back to the seven steps, as I showed you before, for e EUMHR, for p five three four, the raw material manufacturer would go through the same principles as you would do for your product, your final product. So they would apply to us. We would ask for the information for that raw material. We technically review it. We work out what the test requirements are. We test it. But because this is man not mandatory, we are not governed under the accreditation bodies in regard to a timeline. So we can issue that certificate immediately. And this would be the logo that you would then see on a raw material to say that it is certified to p five three four. And they would fall under a monitoring regime, like those standards do, for future, certifications. If you are going for EUM HR and you have got these certificates, as I say, you can use it as part of your EU MHR application, and it will save you time. So if you've got any raw material manufacturers that you think this would be applicable to, then please inform them. Please let our salesperson know they could reach out to them, to ask them if they're if if this is a certification that they would want, because this would help you going forward. And here on this slide, we will share the slides. I think somebody's already asked in the chat. You can see here the advantages of of the benefit of of having that type of certification. We have marks for all of our certification products. So as I've already said, there would be a new mark for EU MHR, but we also have a mark for p five three four along with all of the other marks that you see for for our standards. So basically, by going for EU MHR, by having the NSF 61, by having regulation four, for example, you are pretty much covered globally for exporting. And one of the things I would say is we we are hearing from a a number of people that they're thinking, oh, this is very time consuming. Do I really want to think about exporting to Europe? What I will say to you is, historically, when you had to get a national certificate for each country, I could understand why some people may not want to go and sell into Europe because they would have all of these different hoops to jump through and all of these additional expenses to gain and maintain a national certificate. This now, one certificate, one investment to get that initial certificate is gonna open you the door to all 27 member states. So it really is, you know, adding value, by gaining this type of accreditation. Now you've heard me say that we have, our 17 o two five accreditation for our testing facilities. Our testing facility is in Raider in Germany. For anybody, as I say, who already works with us, historically, your samples would have been sent to The US for US standards and to UK for The UK standards. This is why we have because it is closer. In the future, we may have other labs in other countries. But for the start of this, we've built our facility, and we gained our certification, so we can start to do the testing there. What it does mean is we have a brand new lab, so we have lots of capacity at the moment. What I will say to you is that if you don't get your projects in now, that capacity is going to start to decrease, and that could cause a delay. So that is the other reason why you need to think about starting sooner rather than later. There is also limited capacity in the whole marketplace, because it doesn't only have to be a 17 o two five accredited lab. It has to be a 17 o two five accredited lab under the EU MHR scope. So you can't just go to any 17 o two five lab. So for example, we have 17 o two five accreditation in our Wales lab. We can't do this type of testing in that lab just because it has a 17 o two five certificate. Because that certificate has been issued by UCAS and doesn't cover the scope of this type of testing. Whereas our lab in Germany does. This is accreditation via DACS, and they have accredited us for the EU MHR testing. So this is why capacity as a whole across the whole marketplace globally isn't huge, and this is why you need to start thinking about getting in there before you end up joining a queue. Okay? But as you can see here, our lab is brand new. So we're not working with old equipment. This is all new equipment. We, as I say, we've been building on this. We've been testing it. We've been doing round robin tests as we refer to them validation tests for for for a long time building our lab capability. We're already working on projects, so it is up and running. And it is important, as I say, that you start to think about getting your projects in the queue ready for certification. So in summary, as I say, we've been spending a long time getting ready. You have got between now and the end of the year. So you've got, you know, roughly six to, you know, six months or so to basically get your paperwork, your projects in that process. Okay? So six to eight months in is where you are at the moment to get ready to be able to hit the ground in January 2027 when we can issue your certificates. If you don't and you want to wait, then that is perfectly acceptable. But you need to remember, after the January 1, you will not be able to sell into Europe unless you have an existing national certificate. And as I said at the beginning, those national certificates will run out. They will expire. And if they're not valid on the 12/31/2026, then you won't be able to use them. Our cutoff dates for national certificates for ACS is the April, so the end of this month. And for UBA, it's the middle, the May 15. Now for anybody who's currently doing an ACS and a UBA project with us, don't worry about that. You know, although there's a cutoff date, your applications are in. We're working on them, and we're we're doing everything we can, to to get them completed by the end of the year. But what I would say, speak with the project manager that you're working with and anything you can do to help with any supplier information, getting your suppliers to speed up, that would help to ensure that you you achieve your accreditation. We're gonna move on to questions in a minute. But one of the other things I just want to share with you, we've covered the time frames, of getting your applications in. We've covered the time frame for these types of projects. The other thing that I want to share is that by working with us at NSF, if we are currently doing another certification scheme, such as NSF 61, which requires auditing, what we will do is we will bundle the audits together. So what that means, first of all, if that's gonna save you money, and I know that's one of the highest priorities for for probably all of you on this call. We're not gonna be coming out and doing the separate audit. Okay? If your audit has already happened, then we may have to still come out and do an audit because of where it falls in the year. But if we haven't already done the audit, we will bundle it with the other audits. So it's gonna save you money. It's gonna save you time, and it's gonna be less disruptive for you and your your, workforce because you've not got our audit to come in several times. What we will do is we will provide you with information, as to what to expect from those audits because they are slightly different to other audits. So what will happen when you work with NSF for EU MHR and pre assessment is you will have a kickoff meeting with a dedicated project manager. So once you've had your quotation and accepted, that, your salesperson will organize a kickoff meeting as a handover with the project manager. And that project manager will explain to you exactly what is required during those audits, particularly when it comes to, as having to do the sample selection as well. That project manager will also agree with you how they're gonna keep you informed and the communication. I'm very mindful that when you're going through the certification process, you're handing things over to us and we're working on them. And you're you're then sat there thinking what's happening. So you will agree with that project manager the new way of communication going forward, whether that's regular calls, regular meetings, so that you know what's happening throughout the process. They will also explain to you any support that they need from you regarding your supplier information, and that will all be part of your kickoff meeting. So I will end on that note to say, please go away, have a look at your current certifications for Europe. Have you got any national certificates? Do you want a national certificate to give you a bit of time? If so, you need to speak to our sales team immediately because of the time frames. Think about, do you wanna start pre assessment? Because think about lab capacity and the times it will take to get your product through that certification process. Reach out to our sales team and they can support you through all of this. And on that note, I'll move on to any questions. So before I do, I'm gonna stop sharing and come back onto the screen. And we can go and have a look at some questions. So, so somebody's put here, as we know, The United Kingdom is out of the European Union. So EUMHR is valid for UK, or is RAS still in existence? So, unfortunately, because of Brexit, we in The UK are not falling under EU MHR. There is no intention from the government, and I can state that because I have been involved in discussions, on this topic. There is no intention for them to adopt EU MHR. So if you have a product and you want to sell it into Europe, you will need EU MHR. And if you wanna sell it into The UK, you need regulation four. For those that aren't familiar, regulation four is the regulation that is required in The UK for the water supply water fittings regulations nineteen nineteen ninety nineteen ninety nine. RAS is another form of that certification. So you could take RAS or you could take regulation four NSF regulation four. It is exactly the same. The regulation four process is slightly quicker than the RAS process, but you would need it separately. Let's have a look. What else have we got? Okay. So what is the difference between EU MHR and EU drinking water or e EUDWD? EUDWD stands for the drinking water directive. So that is the the regulation that that that is that is the document that consists of all of these different legal acts. And the EUMHR stands for minimum hygienic requirements. So what you're doing is you're going for certification against those minimum hygienic requirements that fall under article 11 that are part of the drinking water directive. There are other parts to that drinking water directive for the things. But for water products, it is the minimum hygienic requirements that you need to gain certification for. So if you've got your EU MHR certification and somebody says, do you comply to EUDWD? Yes. You do. There's my certificate to say I do for that product. K? Let me go through. What happens if the final product uses the same material in all models, penstocks? Also, equipment approved material will also be tested. Okay. I'm not sure fully what that means, what other questions asking. But what I can say, and hopefully, this will answer it, is that, if you have a, a a a component that is used in multiple final products, And that so let's say it's an O ring, and that O ring is certified. You'll get a certificate for that O ring, and then you can use that certificate against all of the different models that contain that, particular component. Same with if you have a p five three four certificate for raw material. Once that raw material has got that certificate, that certificate can be used against any pro any assembled product going forward. What I can also say to you is if you have a selection of the same product but in different sizes, we can and we refer to this as bracketing in our other standards. We can look at the smallest and the largest, and we can certify for that range or that family. So we don't need to test every single size of each component. We can go for the smallest and the largest, for example, because it's all based on risk, as I've said earlier. So we can look at giving you a certificate that covers a range, as long as every single size uses the same ingredients, the same materials, in there, then we can do that. Okay? That's all the questions that we have got on the screen. Nipah, there's no more that I'm not seeing, Gisa. Just those three? Yes. I think you covered all, Sam. We've got something in the chat. Let me go to chat. I think that's what's happened. There's people who've put things in the chat. Yes. As I've said, we will send, we're quite happy to give you a copy of the presentation. So we've got another question like stainless on stainless steel. Will test, will the testing be done on approved material also? So if a material is on the positive list, we don't need to do the testing. Okay? What I would say though when it comes to metals, metals, when we do need to do testing, they can take considerably longer. If something is not on the positive list, then we would need to do testing. The positive list is not something within our control. So, you know, it we have, links that we can send you for the positive list. It's easy to get access to that on through the Internet anyway, so you'd be able to see what materials are on there. But when you send your information through for us to do our technical review, we will then confirm what materials are on the positive list. Somebody's put there, we have DWI certification. Will this certification also be affected? So I'm assuming when you say you have DWI certification, as far as I'm concerned, the DWI re refers to the drinking water inspectorate, which is regulation 31 in The UK. So unless we're talking something different, and that certification, if it is for regulation 31, is a UK based certification. And as I've already said, The UK doesn't fall under EU and HR. So reg four, reg 31 would fall under the existing schemes, and they would continue to operate under those existing schemes. We've then got a rubber compound. Again, if this isn't a final product, then we would need to look at this under potentially p five three four. But our sales team and our our technical team can confirm what would be required, for that. The requirements of EUWD certification recognizes that intermediate products such as plastics, pallets used in final products fall outside of the scope. Yes. We've covered that. However, information on intermediate products is essential given. Yeah. So I think we've covered that. So basically what you're saying there is that under ACS and KTW, yes, you are correct. Those raw materials, those pre products, those granulates, pallets, etcetera, are covered under, the current national certificates. I really don't know why they haven't been covered under, EUMHR. I don't even know what, whether they will be considered going forward in the future. From what we understand at the moment, that there is no plan for that. And we we spotted that at NSF, and that's why we created p five three four. And that's how we get that covered. So as I say, raw material manufacturers can get p five three four. We can do it now. We can start it now. We can issue the certificates, but it isn't mandatory. And what we're doing is we're assessing it against the EU MHR requirements. And if they get it, as I said earlier, it means that it will save you as the final product, manufacturer to, on your time and testing costs. We've covered the one about The UK. As a material supplier, does our NSF 61 certificate, is it enough, or do we need to comply with EU NHR? Yes. You need to comply with EU NHR. What I will say to you is that we are currently looking at whether any of the information from your NSF 61 application can be used in your EU MHR application. That doesn't mean testing. So we can't take the test results from NSF 61 and use it for EU and HR. And the reason for that is the testing requirements for each standard are different. So in simple terms, for example, the temperature range may be different. If we take reg four, for example, under EU MHR, we have to test in chlorinated water and non chlorinated water. If you have a product certified to reg four, we don't test in chlorinated water. So we couldn't take test results and use them for EUMHR. It would be wonderful if we had a global, harmonized standard. We don't. We now end up having The US standards, a European harmonized standard, and The UK standards. And, unfortunately, we need to comply with with each of those. But what we are looking at, as I say, is whether we can use any of the, information that you have provided regarding documents and and MSDSs and things like that. At this moment in time, we can't because it is about, having the capability to do that, but it is something we are working on. So hopefully in the future, we can provide that to you, and that would just save you some time. But at the moment, we have our own documents, application forms that are specific to EU and HR. Filter media, like magnesium dioxide granules require do they require EUMHR? Media is outside of the EUMHR scope. So, the media itself is not covered, and it would be a national, certificate that you would require for media in its own right. So that falls outside. Somebody's asked me what is the difference between EU FCM versus EU DWD. I have no idea unfortunately as to what EU FCM is so if you could give me what the abbreviations are for that. It's not something I've heard of. As I say, there's EU MHR, which is the minimum hygienic requirements, but I'm not sure what FCM is. But if you let us know, I'll try and come back and answer that for you. So what is the equivalent of EUM HR in The Middle East? It's EUM HR. So well, sorry. If you want to sell in The Middle East, then you you're looking at NSF 61 predominantly. If you are in The Middle East manufacturing and you want to sell into Europe, it's a UNHR. Somebody's asked, we are NSF 61 certified. So will testing be excluded or test need to be repeated? As I've said, they need to be repeated because, we we test to a different scope and a different accreditation scheme. How do we start the certification process is another question. Just contact your, salesperson. If you don't know who that is, my contact details and my email are on the second page of the slide pack that we'll send you. Drop me an email, and I will pass on your details to the relevant salesperson. Can someone take EUM HR and NSF 61 simultaneously? Yes. You most definitely can along with any of the standard that we we're doing. We can be looking at multiple standards. But as I've said, we can't use the test results. We can't just test it once and use those results for all of the different standards. But you can certainly apply, and we can certainly be working on them at the same time. Is NSF p five three valid even when customers obtain certification from a certification body other than NSF? So p five three four is a protocol that we have created so that it's what so there are no other organizations that are offering NSF p five three four at the moment. Whether they do that in the future, then we're happy for them to be able to do that. This is we haven't created this, in the guise of we're the only organization that could offer it. We have actually provided all of the other test labs with the information so that they could certify to it should they, wish to do so. And so if there was a p five three four certificate provided by another organization, then we at NSF would accept it in one of our EU MHR, applications. In the same way as if we issue a p five three four certificate and you were to go and get your EU MHR certification elsewhere, then they would accept the p five three four certificate because it's been produced against the EU MHR criteria, and it's been done in a 17 o two five accredited lab that's accredited against the EU MHR standard. So again, it's about making sure that the labs that you use are accredited to 17 o two five under the scope of of EU MHR. What I would say to you though is it makes sense if you're going for your p five three four and then your EU MHR, because some people, are both the raw material and the final, product manufacturer is it would make more sense to do them both in the same organization because then it just makes the process quicker because we've already done the formulation review. We don't need to relook at things. And that, I think, covers all of the questions. So we've got one minute, and we're ended. So I'm gonna pass back over to you, Nupur. Thank you, Sam, for such an insightful session and taking up all the questions from the participants. We are conscious of time here. If you have any further questions, please email us at water@NSF.org. Before we wrap up, a short feedback survey is now being released. It will take less than a minute to complete. Your input helps us to improve future sessions. Thank you once again for attending today's webinar. We hope it provided valuable insights into EU MHR and how it can support your work. Thank you once again. Thank you.