Standards giant must live up to China standards

To define China Certification & Inspection Group (CCIC) most succinctly, it is a giant inspecting, testing and certification service. In fact, it's the largest company of its type in China and one of the largest in the world.

Its main mission is to ensure that standards set by the Chinese government for various products and materials are met and the safety, health, and quality issues are addressed. For more than three decades, CCIC has played a significant role in the trade and economic development in China, as well as elsewhere in the world.

Armed with accreditation by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China (AQSIQ), and other Chinese government agencies, CCIC has built a workforce of 16,000 people, strategically located in nearly 150 branches/sub-branches and laboratories throughout the country and at 30 operations abroad.

With China entering the World Trade Organization and going through an extended period of rapid economic development, CCIC's role and business have been growing at a fast rate as well.

CCIC strives to provide one-stop services to clients in the fields of quality, safety, health and environmental protection. Inspection includes quality, quantity, weight, packaging/labeling, pre-shipment certification of imported recyclable materials, testing of petroleum and chemical products, minerals, and agricultural byproducts, to name a few. It also provides management system certification, including ISO9001 Quality Management Systems and ISO14001 Environment Management Systems.

CCIC was the quality services provider for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Its clients include BP, Philips, Dell, BMW, Samsung, Siemens, Canon, Motorola, Shell, Hisense, Haier and 100,000 others around the globe.

CCIC set up three operations in the US. The first was in Los Angeles in 1990, followed by a subsidiary in New York. In 2002, to diversify risk and better service clients in the Midwest, an independent entity was established in Chicago. The three operations collaborate to cover the entire U.S.

"Our major business here is conducting pre-shipment inspection on materials and products to China," said Guo Tinglin, vice-president of CCIC USA in Chicago.

To reduce raw material cost and the impact on the environment, China has been importing large quantities of recyclable materials to meet the tremendous demands for raw materials.

More than 80 percent of the pre-shipment inspection that CCIC Chicago conducts is on waste materials, primarily paper and paperboard scraps, metal and plastic scraps.

The Chinese government, in an attempt to minimize hazardous risk to the environment and prevent recyclable wastes from getting into China, implemented mandatory inspection before shipments for all waste materials from 39 countries in 2007, including the US.

"The inspection is quite strict," said Guo. "If a syringe or any bullet is found upon arrival, the entire shipment would be returned."

Guo said CCIC inspectors are well trained and have the advantage of in-depth understanding of the Chinese regulations.

When there are regulations required by Chinese government for a special situation, such as the elimination of mosquitos from containers when Zika broke out, they can take quick actions to implement the policy to measure.

In 2015, CCIC's inspection success rate was more than 99 percent for shipments to China.