Dangerous Goods Safety Adviser: Which Companies Must Appoint One?

Some obligations are never discovered in a company’s own sector: they surface during a customer audit, an inspection or an insurer’s questionnaire. Appointing a dangerous goods safety adviser — conseiller à la sécurité pour le transport de marchandises dangereuses, or CSTMD — is one of them. It does not only concern hauliers, it does not depend on company size, and many directors believe they are outside its scope for the wrong reasons.

Here is how to work out whether your company is covered — and why the answer changed for a whole population of businesses on 1 January 2023.

The rule: chapter 1.8.3 of the ADR

The obligation does not come from French law but from international agreements negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe: the ADR for road transport, the RID for rail and the ADN for inland waterways.

Chapter 1.8.3 of these agreements sets the principle: every company whose activities include the carriage of dangerous goods, or the related operations of packing, loading, filling or unloading, must appoint one or more safety advisers responsible for helping to prevent risks to people, property and the environment.

In France, the rule is implemented by the order of 29 May 2009 on the inland transport of dangerous goods, known as the arrêté TMD. Its article 6 deals with the appointment of the adviser, the certificate, accident reports, the annual report and exemptions.

The trigger is the activity, not the trade

This is the point most companies miss. The trigger is neither the business classification code, nor owning vehicles, nor turnover. It is the list of operations actually performed:

Activity	Concrete example
Consigning	Handing over for carriage a parcel of paint, lithium batteries or crop protection products
Carriage	Moving dangerous goods yourself
Packing	Packaging a dangerous product for transport
Loading	Loading drums or gas cylinders onto a vehicle
Filling	Filling a tank, tank-container or battery-vehicle
Unloading	Discharging a tank of liquid fertiliser, unloading dangerous packages

One line is enough. And the reasoning works both ways: a haulier that neither loads nor unloads falls under “carriage”; a manufacturer with no vehicles at all falls under “consigning”, “packing” and “loading”.

The result is a population far wider than the transport sector: chemicals and contract manufacturing, laboratories, distributors of crop protection products, garages and dealerships, construction firms, agricultural cooperatives, logistics platforms, e-commerce businesses shipping lithium batteries — all may be covered.

The extension to consignors: what changed in 2023

The most significant recent development comes down to one word: consignor.

In its 2019 version, the ADR extended the duty to appoint an adviser to companies taking part in the transport of dangerous goods solely as consignors, without themselves carrying out any physical packing or loading operation. A transitional measure gave companies not previously covered until the end of 2022 to comply. In other words, the obligation has applied in full to that population since 1 January 2023.

The argument still often heard — “we don’t do the transport, our haulier handles it” — is therefore exactly the one the text set out to neutralise. Subcontracting carriage does not take you out of scope: the customer remains the consignor, and it is the consignor who decides what leaves, under which UN number and in which packaging.

What about exemptions?

They exist. Article 6 of the arrêté TMD provides cases where no adviser need be appointed. Two precautions apply before relying on them.

The first concerns interpretation. These exemptions are construed narrowly and depend on the exact nature of the flows: substances, quantities, packagings, operations actually performed. A quick reading easily leads a company to believe wrongly that it is exempt.

The second concerns evidence. Relying on an exemption means being able to show, during an inspection, that its conditions were met — which requires the same mapping of flows as compliance itself. The analytical work has to be done in either case.

The prudent approach is to build that map — substances, UN numbers, hazard classes, packagings, transport modes, operations performed in-house — and then have the conclusion confirmed, rather than assuming an exemption.

Why the role exists

The obligation may look like paperwork. It in fact answers a documented risk. In a study published in 2006 in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, A. Oggero, R. M. Darbra, M. Muñoz, E. Planas and J. Casal analysed 1,932 accidents occurring during the transport of hazardous substances by road and rail, showing that road accounts for the majority of recorded cases and that release of substance is the most frequent event type (see the study).

And these accidents are not purely technical. In a paper published in 2021 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, S. A. Bęczkowska and I. Grabarek, of the Warsaw University of Technology, model the influence of the human factor on the safety of road transport of dangerous goods and underline its decisive weight (see the study). A safety adviser does not act on molecules: they act on gestures, procedures and people’s competence.

Once you know you are covered

Three decisions follow.

In-house or external. The adviser may be an employee or an external consultant working for several companies. The first makes sense where flows are regular and significant; the second suits occasional flows. Either way, the employer’s responsibility is not transferred to the adviser.

The scope of the certificate. The certificate is not generic: it covers transport modes and hazard-class domains. It is the map of flows that dictates the scope required, not the other way round — a subject covered in our article on the CSTMD examination and the scope of the certificate.

The declaration. Appointing is not enough: since 2021 the adviser must be declared online via the service run by the ministry responsible for ecological transition. The practicalities are set out in our article on declaring your dangerous goods safety adviser.

One common confusion is worth clearing up: the safety adviser has nothing to do with the road transport certificate of professional competence, which governs access to the haulage profession and has its own dedicated page on this site. A company carrying dangerous goods may fall under both schemes, for entirely separate reasons.

Take action

Start with the only thing that settles the question: a map of your dangerous goods flows — substances, UN numbers, classes, packagings, transport modes and operations performed in-house. Then test it against ADR 1.8.3 and article 6 of the arrêté TMD, and have the analysis confirmed if you believe an exemption applies. Our full page on the dangerous goods safety adviser certificate gathers the steps, the competent body and answers to the most frequent questions.