The Portal is now live!
That is the EPA’s Hazardous substances reporting and notifications portal. If you import or manufacture hazardous substances this is for you. From 1 January 2026 there is additional information that you need to provide EPA about the hazardous substances that you import or manufacture.
This piece is written by Janet Connochie our Senior Hazardous Substances Consultant, Compliance Certifier and Director.
Are you an Importer or Manufacturer of Hazardous Substances?
Are you sure? Let’s double check
The relevant definitions are in the Hazardous Substances (Importers and Manufacturers) Notice 2015.
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importer, in relation to a hazardous substance, means a person by or for whom a hazardous substance is imported; and includes the consignee of the hazardous substance and a person who is or becomes the owner of or entitled to the possession of or beneficially interested in the hazardous substance on or at any time after its importation and before it has ceased to be subject to the control of the New Zealand Customs Service. manufacture, for the purposes of this notice— (a) means make, prepare, produce, label or pack (including packing into a container) a hazardous substance; and (b) includes repacking or relabelling a hazardous substance manufacturer, in relation to a hazardous substance, means a person who manufactures the hazardous substance |
Information / Notification Requirements
You already need to (since 2015) have notified the fact that you are an importer or manufacturer to the EPA. From 1 January 2026 there is additional information you need to supply, and a new portal that you will need to use to do this. If you have already registered as an importer or manufacturer in the past, you will need to add your details to the portal to add the NZBN and substance approval numbers within 30 days of first import/manufacture after 1 January 2026.
New information is
- Your NZBN – New Zealand Business Number
- Approval numbers of the substances you import or manufacture
- This could be an individual approval or group standard
- If you have 25 different products under the ‘Cleaning Products (Corrosive) Group Standard 2020 – HSR002526’, you only need to list that group standard once.
There is no need under this notification to report individual product names or any quantities.
The approval number is required to be included on the SDS (normally on section 15 of the SDS). Chemsafety can help with assigning hazardous substances to the correct approval, and with ensuring your SDS are compliant. If you can not find the approval number, please talk to us, so we can bring your SDS to compliance.
Annual reporting for identified substances
Separately from the above notification requirements for some ‘identified substances’ there are now annual reporting requirements for active ingredients.
This is the reporting of the total amount of active ingredients in each product manufactured or imported in the given calendar year.
Example
You manufacture a prickle weed killer(individual approval number: HSR000425),active ingredient bentazone 72g/L.
If you manufactured 10,000 × 200mL bottles then the amount of active ingredient to report is 144kg (10,000 × 0.2L × 72g/L ¸ 1000g/kg).
The annual reporting for 2025 is due by 31 May 2026 – EPA advise that they will be publishing further guidance and hold webinars for those who need to submit annual reports. There are additional requirements for explosives.
For more information – including the slides and recording of the EPA Webinar that was held on 26 November – see the EPA webpage for the Importers & Manufacturers Notice.
The Portal is live
EPA’s information page about the portal contains detailed information step by step. Here at Chemsafety we found it relatively straightforward to just dive right in to sign up. The basic steps were
- Create account (includes multi-factor authentication)
- Link to business
- Upload authorisation letter (template text is provided)
- Confirm details of business and any other users
- Add HSNO approvals for the substances that you import or manufacture
For a very simple set-up it took less than 10 minutes to complete the whole process.
Contact us if you have any questions about your hazardous substances compliance.