In Georgia, fertilisers are regulated as "agrochemicals" under the Law of Georgia on Pesticides and Agrochemicals (No 1696, 1998, as amended), which in Article 3(c) defines agrochemicals as fertilisers, chemical improvers, agronomical ore and nutritional supplements intended for plant feeding and soil enrichment.

All agrochemicals (that is, also fertilisers and plant biostimulants) require mandatory state registration before they can be manufactured, imported, stored, sold, used or advertised (Article 3(e) of that Law and Article 49 of the Food/Feed Safety, Veterinary and Plant Protection Code, No 6155, 2012).

Plant biostimulants, in addition, do not have a dedicated regulatory framework in Georgia; they are classified instead by their function and claims: Products with nutritional or soil-improvement claims are handled as agrochemicals (fertilisers) under the lighter track, whereas products making plant-growth-regulation claims risk being captured by the pesticide definition in Article 3(b), which is a heavier regime, and microbial products may require additional assessment, with the production of biological pesticides itself needing a licence under Article 13.

In practice this means the wording of the label and claims is what decides the classification, so keeping claims strictly nutritional or soil-related is the way to stay in the lighter agrochemical track.

The competent registering body is the National Food Agency (NFA), a legal entity under the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia (Code Articles 21¹ and 22(c.a)), rather than the Ministry directly; border checks fall under the Revenue Service.

To place a product on the market you would, first, register as a business operator in the register of economic activities (Code Article 13), which in practice is done through a local entity or an appointed representative.

Second, you would file a registration dossier with the NFA (Article 12(6)) containing the registrant's details, the product name, its composition, the scope of use and efficacy data, the effects on human health and the environment, the disposal method, use instructions, label and packaging details, analytical methods, and first-aid information.

Third, Georgian-language labelling is mandatory (Article 18(3)).

Fourth, once the registration certificate is granted the product is entered in the State Catalogue, and products not listed there may not be imported or circulated (Articles 4(1)(b) and 12(9)); traceability must also be maintained (Article 17).

A significant advantage for EU companies is that products already registered in an EU or OECD member state are exempt from local registration testing under Article 10(1), meaning no Georgian field-efficacy trials are required. The important caveat is that this exemption is from testing, not from registration itself, and a CE mark under the EU Fertilising Products Regulation is a form of self-certification rather than a "registration," so it may not automatically trigger the exemption for biostimulants; applicability and any additional requirements (Article 28(2)(d)) should be confirmed with the NFA at the outset.

On timing, the statutory position is that the decision and certificate are issued within one month of the results being submitted (Article 10(10)), but in practice the end-to-end process runs roughly three to six months for a documented imported fertiliser, six to twelve months where additional review or local data is needed, and longer for novel biological products.

Fees are set by Government ordinance (Code Article 21²(2)) and there is no consolidated English tariff, so the current schedule should be obtained directly from the NFA before quoting.

In short, the route is to appoint (or have) a local representative, confirm the classification and the applicability of the testing exemption with the NFA, compile the dossier together with a Georgian-language label, submit it, and obtain the certificate and State Catalogue listing.

For context on the compliance stakes, placing unregistered, expired or low-quality agrochemicals on the market attracts a fine of GEL 2,000 (€665) for a small business or GEL 4,000 (€1,325 ) for other operators, doubled on repeat (Article 72 (€2,650). So you can’t say you didn’t know :)

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The sciBASICS Team.