My chemical product contains trace contamination with regulated substances – can I sell it legally and how do I prove this to my counterparty?

Client

Manufacturer in the chemical sector

The situation

Chemical substances can contain trace contamination from other compounds – including substances subject to separate regulatory regimes that are not part of standard chemical law or REACH. A manufacturer in the chemical sector faced an unusual problem: one of its products contained trace quantities of substances linked to drug-prevention regulations. The situation was not regulated under either Polish law or EU rules. At stake was a critical commercial contract and the relationship with the product’s recipient.

Our role

We guided the client through the overlapping regulatory frameworks of chemical law, drug-prevention regulations and product liability rules. The task was to find a solution that simultaneously ensured full legal compliance and met the client’s business needs, preserving the contract and the relationship with the recipient. Where the regulations were silent or ambiguous, we built a legal argument based on analogies and general principles, agreed with the client and the regulator.

The result

We found a solution reconciling the compliance perspective with the business perspective, the client preserved the contract and the relationship with its counterparty. The case shows that the most difficult regulatory problems are not those where the law says “no”, but those where the law simply does not answer the question and where a solution must be built from scratch.

Does your chemical product raise compliance questions where the regulations offer no clear answer? We will find a solution.