CE marking indicates that a product is compliant with all New Approach directives relating to health, safety, environment and consumer protection. As a self-declared self-governing process, it does not require third party assessment or renewal, but as is often found to be the case, it is only ever applied once and always assumed to be bona fide by the seller.

The CE mark itself does not imply approval or certification. 

In the cases of electrical products it usually means that the item has been assessed for compliance with the Low Voltage Directive, EMC Directive and Product Liability Directive. 

Only if a product lacks safety does the Product Liability Directive apply.  The Directive on product liability covers all aspects of the final product including raw materials and components, and according to the New Approach directives, in cases where the manufacturer is not established in the Community, the importer must be able to provide the surveillance authority with a copy of the EC declaration of conformity, and make the technical documentation available. Therefore, it is not unusual to find that it is the importers responsibility to ensure that the product complies with the essential requirements and that the appropriate conformity assessment procedure has been applied.  Getting this assurance from the manufacturer may be straightforward but checking it for yourself is another matter.

The Directive on product liability covers any product manufactured or imported into the Community, which causes damage to individuals or private property.  It establishes a strict liability regime on manufacturers and importers in the Community.

The biggest difficulties in CE marking are in knowing:

• Which Directives and standards apply to the product
• If the applied standards are current or superseded
• How to interpret technical specifications
• If the assessment or testing procedure was correctly applied
• What is appropriate to demonstrate compliance
• Who to contact for assistance

The CETICK service is designed to help you document a thorough technical check on any product that you may want to sell.

Information that you receive from your supplier relating to CE marking is checked by professional engineering staff with appropriate product experience and a report is generated which details their findings.

It is important to do a regulatory compliance check to make sure that your supplier has been truthful about the product that is being supplied to you.

Documenting the checking that you do will help defend yourself against any claims of negligence by showing that you did the best job you could of making sure that the product was fit for purpose and safe to use.

• Checks that the referenced standards, including all amendments are appropriate and adequately defined for the product in accordance with the Official Journal (OJ)
• Checks the credentials of the test laboratory
• Warns about documentation errors and omissions and lists ‘suspect’ information for further investigation

Cranage also informs you of forthcoming changes to reference standards that might affect product compliance in the near future.

The CE-Tick service is offered on 5 levels and can be ordered via the shopping cart system below:-

Declaration of Conformity / Test Certificate (s) assessment includes review of applicable Directives and standards, references, expiry dates, product description and relevance information.

Level 4: Design
               Check