A PFAS Restriction That Doesn't Check the Factory's Address

From 10 October 2026, the EU bans placing textiles, leather goods and footwear on its market if they carry more than trace levels of PFHxA - a "forever chemical" used for water and stain repellence. The instrument is Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/2462, which inserts Entry 79 into REACH's restriction list. It is written to apply the moment a qualifying product enters the EU market, not the moment it leaves an EU factory - because under REACH's own definitions, importing a product is placing it on the market. India ships a meaningful share of its leather exports straight into the countries this restriction governs. Compliance guidance on Entry 79 published so far is framed for EU brands auditing their suppliers - as though the exposure sits with the buyer. The regulation's own text doesn't draw that line.

What Entry 79 Actually Restricts

Entry 79 sets two thresholds: 25 parts per billion for PFHxA and its salts, and 1,000 ppb for the broader group of PFHxA-related substances, both measured in homogeneous material. Above those levels, the restriction bites in stages. From 10 October 2026, it covers textiles, leather, furs and hides in clothing and related accessories for the general public; footwear for the general public; paper and cardboard used as food-contact materials; general-public mixtures; and cosmetic products. A narrower category - general textile articles that aren't clothing or accessories - gets an extra year, restricted only from 10 October 2027. Clothing, footwear and leather goods are in the first wave, not the second.

The Restriction Doesn't Care Where the Product Was Made

Nothing in Entry 79's text carves out products manufactured outside the EU. That absence isn't an oversight - it follows directly from how REACH defines its own trigger. Article 3(12) of the base Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 defines "placing on the market" as "supplying or making available, whether in return for payment or free of charge, to a third party," and adds, in the same sentence: "Import shall be deemed to be placing on the market." A shipment doesn't need to be manufactured in Germany to fall under a German-market restriction. It needs to cross into the EU.

There's a real qualification here, and it matters: REACH's own definition of "importer" (Article 3(11)) is "any natural or legal person established within the Community who is responsible for import." An Indian tannery or garment factory, sitting in India, cannot itself hold that legal status - only an EU-established entity can. In practice that entity is either an unrelated EU buyer who does the importing, or an exporter's own EU subsidiary or distribution arm where one exists. Either way, the restriction has already attached to the goods by the time they clear customs - it isn't waiting for a downstream retailer to decide to test for PFAS.

How Much Indian Leather Is Actually in Scope

This isn't a hypothetical corner of the trade relationship. In FY 2025-26, India's top 15 destination markets accounted for roughly 77.6% of the country's leather and leather-products exports - about US$4.75 billion, per Council for Leather Exports and DGCIS data compiled by IBEF. Within that list, Germany took 10.97%, Italy 6.22%, the Netherlands 6.11%, Spain 5.47% and France 4.65%. Add those five EU markets together and they account for roughly a third of India's leather and leather-product exports - more than the United States takes on its own at 20.54%. Leather goods and clothing accessories are named explicitly in Entry 79's first-wave list; footwear is named separately in the same paragraph. Both categories are squarely inside the restriction that takes effect in October.

Who Actually Carries the Exposure - and Why That's Inference, Not Law

Here the Article moves from what the regulation says to what follows from it - and this next part is inference, not something any instrument states outright: because the restriction attaches to the product at the point of import rather than to whoever manufactured it, and because a substantial share of India's leather exports flow directly into precisely the EU markets Entry 79 covers, Indian exporters are not shielded merely by the fact that a customer's compliance department is the one that eventually gets asked for paperwork. Where an Indian exporter sells through its own EU-based distribution entity, that entity is the "importer" holding direct legal exposure under Entry 79 - not a customer three steps removed. Where the sale runs through an unrelated EU buyer instead, that buyer is the one legally exposed, and the practical pressure travels back up the chain commercially rather than by direct legal obligation. Either way, "the customer's problem" is not a safe assumption to build a compliance posture on, because which of those two structures applies depends on how a given export relationship is actually set up - not on where the goods were made.

What This Changes Before October

This is the second REACH mechanism this year to catch Indian exporters on a framing gap rather than a missing rule - a Candidate List addition in February found Indian solvent suppliers screening for the wrong trigger; Entry 79 is a different REACH tool (a market restriction, not a Candidate List listing) doing the same thing to a different sector. Nothing in Entry 79 tells an exporter what paperwork to keep - REACH restrictions ban a concentration threshold; they don't mandate a specific certificate. But an exporter who can't show, if asked, that a shipment tests below 25 ppb for PFHxA and 1,000 ppb for related substances is exposed the moment that shipment is placed on the EU market on or after 10 October, regardless of whether the buyer ever asked for that proof. For an exporter selling leather goods, clothing accessories or footwear into Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain or France - markets that together take a larger share of India's leather exports than the US does alone - that date is close enough that "our customer handles compliance" is a structure worth checking, not assuming, before it arrives.

Source note: Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/2462 and Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 (REACH), Article 3, are published by the European Union at EUR-Lex. Trade figures are from IBEF, compiled from Council for Leather Exports and DGCIS data.