One of the biggest changes this move will bring for cosmetic companies will be that imported ordinary use cosmetics will need to be registered with food & drug administration authorities at provincial levels in the future, rather than the state authority in Beijing under the current system.
The detailed rules for this have not been published, but according to CIRS, the reform is good news to companies who wish to place ordinary use cosmetics on the Chinese market because the duration of registration may be shortened.
"It is also good news for many cosmetic manufacturers in China because they now have one less government body to deal with," spokesperson April Guo informed CosmeticsDesign-Asia.com.
This will not come as such good news for consultancy firms in Beijing however, who CIRS reckon will lose their location advantages on the back of the restructuring.
Cosmetic ingredient inventory batch updates
The China Food & Drug Administration (CFDA) has also recently published the final version of the second batch of Inventory of Existing Cosmetic Ingredients in China.
The batch now includes 411 cosmetic ingredients, which in comparision to the draft version of 637 ingredients published last year, finds 226 cosmetic raw materials to have been removed.
"Considering that many of those 226 cosmetic ingredients are commonly used cosmetic ingredients in China, we think that they will be included in the later batches of IECIC as CFDA reviews more cosmetic ingredients."
The final version of the first batch of IECIC was published on 7 Feb 2013 and includes 1674 ingredients. To see a full rundown of those ingredients remaining on the updated list please click here.