Certification and compliance of electrical equipment for use in hazardous areas to Canadian standards available in the UK
Sira Test and Certification now offers compliance in Canada.
Sira Certification Service negotiated a mutual agreement with Canadian Standards Association (CSA) which has been recognised in Canada since May 2001.
As a result, the Chester Hazardous Area Centre now offers testing and assessment to meet the standards in Canada.
In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, national compliance schemes can place a heavy burden on manufacturers of electrical products for use in hazardous areas. With this in mind Sira conducted a survey to find out customer requirements of a certification service.
The results showed that compliance in other countries is a priority for many manufacturers, with Canada listed as one of the top countries in which the importance of achieving compliance is high.
Sira and CSA then worked together to achieve the mutual recognition which is beneficial to both European and Canadian manufacturers who can now gain easy and cost-efficient access to these markets.
Sira says it remains the only independent UK body to offer this mutual recognition agreement for Canada.
Following this latest addition to international compliance recognition, Sira now holds recognition agreements with nationally recognised testing laboratories including FM Global (North America), CSA (Canada), Testsafe and Simtars (Australia) and SABS (South Africa) and, in addition, has a direct route through TIIS into Japan.
This means that manufacturers wanting to sell abroad can gain compliance for their products using one point of contact, Sira.
This effectively keeps times-to-market and associated costs to a minimum, a saving which enables manufacturers to be more competitive in their pricing strategy.
Sira recommends manufacturers apply for overseas compliance early in the product development process, as testing for European certification and overseas markets can be undertaken simultaneously.
