Hi All,

Wondering if there is anyone out there with any knowledge regarding shipping a test machine to China. This is a test machine built in the UK by in house engineers and is to be shipped to China for use by our own plant.

As it is not being sold and is leaving the EU can anyone point me the direction of any standards that may be required, from an ethical point we have already fitted emergency stop functions and you need a key to open the panel to gain access to the electrical parts.

Hope someone can help, if not I will just apply our standards to it.

Cheers

James

Have spent the last 5 years working for an OEM machinery builder, where sales into China was a large sector of our sales.

I would strongly advise not following the advise of the above post as Chinese customs are very strict on what they will allow through, will find trivial reasons for impounding and charging storage and take ages to clear the shipment even when everything is in order.

We ended up using a Chinese shipping agent to import the equipment and get customs clearance. We send the agent a documentation pack ahead of the equipment so that they can start getting customs clearance before the equipment arrives in China. If there are issues we can normally resolve them before the shipment arrives there.

The pack consists of :-

- certificate of origin
- declaration of conformity
- operating manual
- copy of the shipping paperwork
- photos of the equipment
- photos of the ID plate showing serial numbers
- copies of ISPM15 certificates for the timber packing crates
- copy of the purchase order raised in China (to show that all items supplied were on the PO)

We found that this pack speeds up the process of clearing customers and they no longer completely unpack the shipment to verify what is in it. Which also means items don't go missing or get damaged.

In addition, do not ship any IT / Computer equipment, (even if it was made in China), as any IT/Computer equipment must have their CCC accreditation. If you ship any equipment without the CCC accreditation, they will remove it before releasing the shipment. It is possible to get CCC compliant IT equipment in Europe, but at a price. Basically we have been told by the supplier of IT hardware is that to meet the requirements of CCC, specific chips are used which are compatible with Chinese state censorship for web access.

Hope this helps.

A few unfair comments about the quality of Chinese manufacturing. I used to travel to China a lot and source products to sell in Europe.I can hand on heart say that some of the manufacturing plants/processes were better than I have ever seen in similar UK/European plants. I can also say that I saw some that were written off as a potential supplier as soon as I stepped foot through the door.

The issue of poor quality equipment in the UK is not that of the Chinese manufacturer but of whoever is specifying and importing the 'cheaper unsafe version'. It annoys me when people automatically label Chinese products as inferior just because of a handful of bad eggs. At the end of the day you get what you pay for (whether that be in the UK, China or Timbuctoo) and by specifying the correct product/procedures and by evaluating the supplier there is no reason why shoddy equipment would make its way into the marketplace.

I'll get off my soap box now :-)

Conformity to what?