What is legal?

There is a very large flow of products produced and sold by Chinese companies, among others. One can often get a little startled by their ability to copy and mass produce products. Often the products appear to be similar to similar Western-produced products, but they are sold at significantly lower prices.

For an importer, it is primarily seen as an opportunity to sell products at an attractive price, but what about quality and are the products actually legal?

When it comes to legality, it's very difficult for an importer to assess. We have to rely on the CE mark that is usually on the products or their packaging.

In Denmark, the Danish Safety Technology Authority regularly inspects products, partly through random checks and partly following complaints from consumers and competitors. There are similar authorities in the other EU countries. The number of products checked annually varies greatly from country to country, but all countries report to a common database called RAPEX. So if a product is found to be illegal in one EU country, it can easily be detected in the other countries. The database is fully accessible to everyone.

In addition to the FSA checking products, some importers have their own checks, either using their own internal knowledge or by sending products to external experts. Bolls is one of these external experts who can check most electrical products for compliance with EU requirements.

Over the past few years, we have examined over 150 different imported products and only about 10% of them were 100% in order. The typical serious defects we find on electrical products are:

• Lack of grounding
• Lack of fuses
• Too small creep and air distances
• Product fails isolation test
• Use of electrical components that are completely lacking in approval
• Plastic materials that melt or deform during operation
• Plastic materials that are flammable and where fire retardant plastics must be used
• 230Vac wires not secured mechanically
• Lack of isolation for affected parts
• 230V plugs that are labeled with D, S, BS etc. but have never been approved.

For example, other types of errors are:

• Incorrect or non-labelling
• Incomplete or completely missing manual
• Does not comply with RoHS requirements such as lead-free soldering
• Bicycle lamps that do not meet the requirements
• USB cables with such thin inner conductors that the voltage drop is too high.

EU law places responsibility on those who first place the product on the EU market. In other words, if you import products, you have direct responsibility to consumers and authorities. Not only is it responsible for the legality of the product, but it must be possible to obtain a declaration of conformity, as well as reports and other technical documentation as proof of compliance.

If things are not in order, you may risk having to recall all products sold and possibly pay a fine as well as the costs for the Danish Safety Technology Authority's expenses for product testing.

We have seen small industrial machines that were not CE marked and did not comply with the Machinery Directive. If the Danish Working Environment Authority comes by, production is stopped and the machine may have to be rebuilt, which can be very costly for a manufacturing company.

As a minimum, we recommend requiring the following documentation before importing products:

• CE declaration of conformity
• Certificates of completed tests according to relevant standards, if applicable
• Reports on completed tests.

Once the documents are received, check that all relevant CE marking standards and directives are covered. But also check that the reports and certificates cover the current product and are updated to the latest versions of the standards. We see a lot of reports that do not cover the current product, but only a previous version, which is rarely good enough.

After the products are received, random checks should be made to ensure no cheating by delivering a slightly cheaper version that is not legal.

The conclusion is that you need to be careful when selecting products designed and manufactured in China and elsewhere. There are far too many manufacturers who either do not understand what the CE mark covers or do not want to spend time and money on compliance. We can only strongly recommend getting an impartial assessment of the products in Europe before you buy an entire container home. Bolls ApS is a good Danish partner for this type of check.