August 8, 2019
The regulation aims to provide minimum testing, inspection, and sampling requirements that a textile product must fulfill before it can be certified. This is to help ensure that textile products are safe to both our environment and the consumers who use them. The new regulation is a mandatory certification for textile products to be sold in Saudi Arabia.
The Technical Regulation of Textile Products will take effect shortly after August 2019. All textile products placed on the market must comply with this new technical regulation, which will become mandatory in SABER at the beginning of December 2019. To assist you with this change, we sat down with our experts in SASO regulations and interviewed them on strategies to help you stay in compliance.
Q: What is the scope of the current SASO regulation in the field of textile products?
A: This new regulation applies to all textile products containing at least 80% by weight of textile fibers (including curtains, furniture, clothing, technical textile and their textile components) and other articles such as furniture and umbrellas with at least 80% by weight of textile components.
Q: What are the testing requirements by SASO regulation?
A: Textile articles would have to be tested from a mechanical, physical, and chemical perspective. In addition to the requirements in technical regulations, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also requires textile products to fulfill the corresponding SASO / GSO testing standards.
Q: What is SABER, and how does it benefit your global company’s business?
A: SABER is an online platform introduced by SASO allowing companies to register their products and to have a Type Approval Certificate (TAC) and a shipment certificate, both of which are mandatory to enter the Saudi market. These certificates protect the businesses from fraud by making sure the products entering the market conform to the Saudi Approved Standards and Specifications, as well as ensure that the products are safe to consumers.
SABER certification gives protection to your business and consumers, and it reduces the required time for product clearance by the Saudi Customs Authority.
Q: How does the SABER certification process work?
A: The certification process is a simple 4 step process that will allow you to obtain the certifications you need for your products.
- Establishing an account in SABER by the importer.
- The importer registers its products in SABER.
- If the product is a regulated product, the applicant should choose one of the registered Notified Bodies in SABER, like UL, to get the product certificate which will be valid for one year. If the product is a non-regulated one, the importer can upload a self-declaration of conformity, showing the compliance of the product to the Saudi standard and taking responsibility for the product.
- Creating a shipment CoC request for every shipment of the registered products. UL as a Conformity Assessment Body can issue the shipment CoC to the clients through SABER system.
Where and how UL can help you
We are a one-stop-service for testing and certification and can help you throughout all the stages of the supply chain to get your products certified and ready to access the Saudi market. UL offers testing capabilities in Asia and Australia regions, connection with UL CCIC Suzhou certified body recognized as a Conformity Assessment Body, and consultations on the appropriate and applicable standards for the products.
To learn more about the SASO requirements on softlines, consult our dedicated webinar on-demand or contact us to talk with our experts.
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