Guides / Supplement registration in Poland · Updated 19 October 2026

Registering dietary supplements for sale in Poland

A UK seller shipping food supplements into Poland is not just dealing with customs. Before the first unit reaches a Polish customer, the business that places the product on the market has a separate job: registering in Poland dietary supplements with the sanitary authority. Here is what that registration actually involves and how it sits alongside the customs declaration.

This guide is also available in Polish, covering the Polish-consumer duty and VAT side of buying supplements from the UK.

Who this applies to

If you are a private shopper buying a tub of UK-made protein powder for yourself, none of this applies to you; you are not placing anything "on the market." This guide is for the other case: a UK brand, manufacturer or distributor that wants to sell food supplements to customers or retailers in Poland on an ongoing basis. The moment you do that, Polish food law treats you as a "podmiot działający na rynku spożywczym" — a food business operator — and a specific registration duty attaches to the product before it reaches a Polish shelf or a Polish customer's door.

Why GIS, and not a medicines regulator

The first thing to settle is status. Poland's Act on food safety and nutrition defines a dietary supplement (suplement diety) as a foodstuff intended to supplement a normal diet, concentrated in vitamins, minerals or other substances with a nutritional or physiological effect, sold in dosed form such as capsules, tablets, sachets or ampoules. That same definition excludes anything that has the characteristics of a medicinal product. Because a supplement is legally food, the authority that matters is the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate (Główny Inspektor Sanitarny, GIS), not a medicines agency. If your product's dosage or claimed effect pushes it toward a medicinal product instead, GIS notification will not be the relevant route, and you need to resolve that classification question first — ideally before you commit to a shipment, since reclassifying a product after import is far more disruptive than before.

The GIS notification: what "gos for supplements" actually means in practice

Article 29 of the Polish Act on food safety and nutrition requires a food business operator who is placing, or intends for the first time to place, a dietary supplement on the Polish market to notify GIS before doing so. This is the registration step searches for "gos for supplements" are usually pointing at: GIS is the Polish sanitary inspectorate, and the notification is how a new product (or a new operator selling an existing product) enters its monitoring system.

The notification must state:

• the product name and its manufacturer;
• the form in which the product is marketed (capsules, powder, drops, and so on);
• the label design in Polish;
• the food category the operator has assigned to the product;
• the qualitative composition, including active substances, and the quantitative composition of ingredients;
• the name, address and NIP (Polish tax identification number) of the notifying operator.

If the product is already placed on the market in another EU member state, the notification must also name the authority there that was notified or that authorised it, with a copy of that earlier notification or authorisation attached. The UK is not an EU member state, so a product's UK sales history, UK registration or sale through a UK retailer does not substitute for any part of this and does not shorten the Polish process.

How the notification is filed

The Act requires the notification to be filed electronically, by entering the data into an electronic form. Where the electronic submission is not signed with a qualified electronic signature, a paper notification on the same form is required as well. The date GIS treats as the filing date is the day it receives the version carrying a qualified electronic signature or a handwritten signature — so a submission sitting unsigned does not yet count as filed. None of this is a product approval in the sense of a licence that GIS grants or refuses up front; it is a notification that puts the product into the monitoring system, and the operator remains responsible for the product meeting food law regardless of what GIS does with the filing afterwards.

Where this sits next to the customs declaration

The GIS notification and the customs import declaration are two separate obligations run by two separate authorities, and doing one does not excuse the other. On the customs side, a commercial consignment of supplements needs an EORI number and a standard import declaration to the EU, the same as any other goods arriving from a country outside the EU. On the UK export side, the requirements are lighter than for products of animal origin: GOV.UK's guidance on exporting food and drink says an export health certificate is not usually needed for a processed food or drink product that does not contain products of animal origin, which covers most dietary supplement formulations. Confirm with your Polish importer or GIS directly if your product contains any animal-derived ingredient, since that can trigger a different, veterinary-led control.

Getting the product's commodity code and VAT treatment right on the customs side is its own task, separate from the sanitary registration described here; our guide on exporting food supplements from the UK to Poland walks through the classification and declaration side in more detail, and the practical angle of registering a selling business in Poland and getting the paperwork moving is covered in Easy Clearance's guide to registering dietary supplements for the Polish market.

A practical order of operations

1. Confirm the product is legally a dietary supplement, not a medicinal product, under Polish law.
2. Commission a Polish-language label that matches the composition you intend to sell.
3. Prepare the Article 29 notification: product details, composition, label artwork, and your NIP.
4. If the product already circulates in another EU state, gather that state's notification or authorisation to attach.
5. File electronically, with a qualified electronic signature if you have one, or follow up with the signed paper copy.
6. In parallel, arrange the EORI number and customs declaration for the shipment itself.

Common mistakes

• Treating UK sale as equivalent to EU notification. The Article 29 cross-reference to "another member state" has no UK branch; your UK trading history is not evidence GIS can rely on.
• Shipping before the Polish label exists. A GIS filing needs the Polish label design as part of the notification itself, not as an afterthought once stock has landed.
• Assuming notification is approval. Filing with GIS registers the product in the monitoring system; it is not a certificate that GIS has checked and endorsed the formulation.
• Confusing the business notification with a private purchase. Someone ordering supplements from the UK for their own use is not a food business operator and has no Article 29 duty at all.

Related guides

• Importing honey from Poland and the EU into Great Britain

• EORI numbers: when you need a GB, XI or EU number

• Export health certificates for UK food going to the EU

Sources

• Act on food safety and nutrition, consolidated text Dz.U. 2023 poz. 1448, Article 29 (Sejm RP, ELI)
• Export or move food, drink and agricultural products (GOV.UK)

General information, not legal, tax or customs advice. Rules change; confirm current requirements on gov.uk or with a registered agent before you ship.