Thailand has a two-stage gate that catches most first-time exporters. Before your product can be registered, your factory has to be accredited in the Thai FDA system. Companies that plan around product registration alone discover the factory step late, and it adds weeks they had not budgeted.
This page sets out what the process requires. It is general regulatory information, not legal advice.
A Korean 건강기능식품 will normally be handled in Thailand as a food supplement (ผลิตภัณฑ์เสริมอาหาร), regulated by the Thai Food and Drug Administration under the Ministry of Public Health, on the authority of the Food Act B.E. 2522.
Within that category Thailand draws a further line that determines your timeline:
registration route.
separate approval with its own safety dossier — substantially longer and more expensive.
Check your full formula, including excipients, against the Thai approved list before quoting a launch date. A single unlisted botanical extract can move a product from the first route to the second.
A foreign manufacturer cannot import or register on its own. You need a Thai entity holding an Or.7 (อ.7) food import licence under Section 15 of the Food Act — sometimes called the warehouse licence, because the premises where imported food is stored must themselves be FDA-approved.
In practice this means one of:
The registration is attached to the licence holder. If your distributor registers in their name and the relationship ends, the registration does not travel with you — and in Thailand you also lose the accredited-factory linkage tied to that filing. Decide deliberately whose name it goes in, and write it into the distribution agreement before the first shipment.
This is the step that surprises people, and it comes first.
Your Korean factory must be registered in the Thai FDA system before its products can be registered. The core requirement is a valid quality-standard certificate — GMP, HACCP or ISO 22000 — issued by an accredited certification body.
This works in your favour. Korean health functional food must by law be manufactured in a GMP-certified facility, so a compliant Korean manufacturer already holds what Thailand asks for. What you need is the certificate naming the actual factory, not the brand owner — in Korea these are frequently separate legal entities.
The certificate must be notarised and legalised through the consular chain: notarisation, authentication by the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then legalisation at the Royal Thai Embassy in Korea.
Start this in parallel with everything else. It blocks stage 2 entirely.
Once the factory is accredited, products are registered individually. The procedure varies by dose form — liquid, powder, capsule, tablet — and each requires:
| Document | Notes |
|---|---|
| Full quantitative formula | Every ingredient including excipients, with technical data sheets |
| Certificate of Free Sale (자유판매증명서) | Proving legal sale in Korea. Legalised. Check remaining validity — a certificate expiring while goods are in transit causes a hold at port |
| Certificate of Analysis | Finished-product laboratory analysis meeting Thai FDA specifications |
| Factory quality certificate | GMP / HACCP / ISO 22000, as used in stage 1 |
| Label artwork | Original plus the proposed Thai label |
On approval the product receives a Thai FDA serial number, which must appear on the label. Registration is product-specific: a flavour or pack variant is a separate filing.
One detail worth flagging to your logistics team: the product name, manufacturer and any approved variant on the certificate must match exactly what is in the cartons. A mismatch between certificate and shipment is a common cause of detention at port, and it is entirely avoidable.
MOPH Announcement No. 448, B.E. 2567 revised how vitamin and mineral contents are calculated and reported, and adjusted maximum daily limits. The most-cited example: the vitamin C ceiling moved from 60 mg/day to 1,000 mg/day, which opened the market to a range of formulations that previously could not be registered.
If your reference material predates July 2024, re-check your formula against the current limits. Korean products are often formulated well above older Thai ceilings, so this change matters — in both directions. Some SKUs that were previously blocked are now registrable; others may still exceed limits for a different nutrient in the same blend.
The label must be in Thai and carry, at minimum:
Claims: only what was accepted in your registration. Korean MFDS-approved claim wording carries no weight in Thailand. Thai rules on supplement claims are restrictive, and statements implying disease treatment or prevention will fail.
Registration does not entitle you to advertise. Advertising content for food supplements requires a Kho Or (ฆอ.) permit from the Thai FDA before publication, and the approved content is what you may actually run — including e-commerce listings and social media.
Plan this as a second regulatory cycle. Thailand actively enforces against unapproved supplement advertising, and the penalty lands on the local licence holder, which makes it your distributor's problem and therefore your relationship's problem.
| Stage | Typical duration |
|---|---|
| Assembling Korean documents | 1–3 weeks |
| Notarisation, MOFA authentication, Thai Embassy legalisation, translation | 3–6 weeks |
| Manufacturer accreditation | Weeks to months — blocks everything downstream |
| Product registration per SKU | Varies by dose form and ingredient list |
| Novel ingredient approval, if triggered | Substantially longer — treat as a separate project |
| Kho Or advertising permit | Additional cycle |
A first import realistically runs four to eight months. Subsequent SKUs from the same factory are much faster, because accreditation and legalised site documents are reusable — which is an argument for registering a small range at once rather than one product at a time.
Korea and Thailand do not have a bilateral FTA, but Thailand is covered by the ASEAN–Korea Free Trade Agreement. Check the preferential rate for your specific HS code and have your Korean supplier issue the matching Form AK Certificate of Origin — the wrong form, or no form, means the standard rate.
On a supplement with thin per-unit margin this single item frequently decides whether the programme works.
healthcito.com compiles publicly available regulatory information. Reviewed 11 August 2026. This page is general information, not legal advice. Thai food regulation is amended by ministerial announcement and changes without much notice — confirm current requirements with the Thai FDA or a licensed registration consultant before acting. Supported by GNMLIFE, Inc.
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