Applicant is the entity who will be the type-approval certificate holder. In some countries, applicant of type approval certification can be any company. It can be overseas company which is not registered in that country. However, in some other, the rule is stricter. They only allow local companies who are registered in that country to hold the certificate. Usually, it must be the company who will import or distribute the product into that country, or the one who’s responsible for the product sales and distribution who should be the certificate holder. Therefore, when something happens to the product, for example harming the user, authority can directly contact the certificate holder to be responsible for the incidents.
For the case of Saudi Arabia Type approval, the applicant must be a local company that is registered in Saudi Arabia. It can be the importer, distributor, or local brand representative in Saudi. While about manufacturer or brand holder that are not registered in Saudi, they cannot be the certificate holder.
So, if you are an overseas manufacturer or brand holder who haven’t had a local partner in Saudi Arabia yet, we encourage you to engaged with local company first. Then, appoint this local partner to be the certificate holder of the product. Otherwise, we cannot apply for Saudi Arabia Type Approval. Another reason why we need to use local company as certificate holder is because the application must be submitted through an account to government website, and this account is only applicable for local company in China.
Why We Care
When starting an approval certification process, we need to decide which party will be the certificate holder. This is to make sure that the appointed party is the correct entity that is allowed to be certificate holder according to local regulation. Therefore, when the certificate is issued, the certificate will be functional for the actual import or sale process. That’s why before processing Saudi Arabia type approval, together we will make sure that you have appointed the correct entity before starting the submission process. So, the mistake or error related to the certificate holder can be avoided.