The objective of EDANA’s Quality and Audit Programme is to provide the absorbent hygiene products industry, as well as the wet wipes industry, with a harmonized quality and hygiene standard, listing the requirements this industry needs to meet to help assuring finished consumer products are safe and meet consumer expectations.

The benefit for the industry is to have one harmonized quality standard, transparent and available through the EDANA website. Converters benefit from getting access to the results of professionally conducted audits, which help them manage their supplier base. Suppliers benefit from independent and objective audits, conducted at their request, against a single standard.

“This is a voluntary program,” explains Marines Lagemaat, technical director of EDANA, “and converters who participate will ask their suppliers to request for an audit. It’s important to emphasize that the suppliers decide to share the audit results with their customers. The program is now open for audits in greater Europe. The intention is to implement it in the Americas and Asia Pacific from 2023 onwards. In the pilot phase the concept has already been tested in all three regions.”

Prior to this launch, two series of pilot audits have been run to demonstrate the standard is adequate and auditable and to finetune both the auditor profile and the training and qualification procedure.

Initially, BSI is designated as the preferred partner to execute the audits, having been involved in the development from the start. In the future, other auditing companies may get involved.

More information is available at https://www.edana.org/quality-audit-programme where converters and suppliers can sign up for participation. One can also register to participate in a training course to get familiar with the standard.

It’s the vision of the EDANA QAP working group, that this standard in time will be the leading standard in the industry. Potentially its scope may be extended with requirements related to occupational health and safety, environmental management, and others.