Supporting international trade

Confidence in the quality of goods and services bought and sold facilitates international trade.

The mutual acceptance of test results and certificates plays an important part in building and maintaining this confidence and UKAS accreditation underpins reliance on testing, inspection and certification services.

• UKAS is the UK government appointed National Accreditation Body tasked with assessing and accrediting the competence of organisations that carry out all types of measurement and evaluation activities.
• UKAS is a key part of the UK’s quality infrastructure that enables the quality, safety and compliance of products and services, which it does on a not-for-profit basis in the public interest. The purpose of accreditation is to provide confidence for consumers, purchasers and regulators in the goods and services they use.
• Organisations accredited by UKAS range from very small test laboratories to multinational certification bodies.
• UKAS accredits over 3000 organisations.
• UKAS is recognised as one of the leading accreditation bodies worldwide.

Enabling trade through accreditation

• Certificates issued by organisations accredited by UKAS (and those accredited by UKAS’s partner national accreditation bodies around the world) are recognised internationally through membership of the International Laboratory Accreditation Co-operation (ILAC) and the International Accreditation Forum (IAF).
• The international recognition of accredited conformity assessment, through mutual recognition agreements, means that goods and services do not need to be retested, inspected or certified for each new export market. This simplifies global supply chains and reduces costs.
• National regulations can create trade barriers through requirements for national testing or certification. Where global mutual recognition, through accreditation, is also built into countries’ trade arrangements and national regulations, this can reduce those barriers, for example by removing the need for duplicative testing
• Accreditation is referenced in the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement and the mutual recognition of accreditation is an important part of agreements between trading partners.

For more information about supporting international trade, please contact [email protected] or call +44 (0) 1784 429000