One big question when processing type approval certificate is “who will be the applicant”. The applicant means the certificate holder, or the party who will own the certificate. By owning the certificate, the owner will be responsible to keep the products quality to comply with the technical standard stated in the certificate.
The policies about certificate owner are different in each country. Some countries allow manufacturer or the factory to be certificate holder, some other allow only the local importer or distributor to hold the certificate, and the rest don’t have any specific requirements, meaning that any company can hold the certificate for that product.
For South Korea Type Approval, the rule about who can be the certificate holder is unique. There, the certificate can be held by either the manufacturer or the importer. In South Korea, manufacturer can be the certificate holder of the product, although the manufacturer is not a company registered in South Korea. By having this policy, this means that we can start the certification process in advance, even when the manufacturer has no local partner in Kore yet.
In terms of functionality, South Korea Type Approval certificate hold by the manufacturer will also be usable for importation process. It’s even preferable for the certificate to be held by the manufacturer because once the certificate is obtained under the name of manufacturer or factory, manufacturer can authorize the importers to use it. One manufacturer can authorize multiple importers to use the same certificate to import.
Beside manufacturer, local importer or distributor can be the holder of South Korea Type Approval certificate. However, this comes with a consequence; If the certificate holder is local importer or local distributor, this certificate will be only usable for that one importer holding the certificate. This cannot be used for any other company to import. Of course, this option is not very efficient especially for manufacturer that has multiple importer partners.
Why We Care
Appointing a company to be certificate holder is not that simple. This is because this process is related to the actual importation process of the product. Not all customs accept authorization letter from certificate holder to the importer. Customs in some countries are so strict, that they only accept certificate owned by the importer to release the product. So, when choosing certificate holder, we need to make sure that we know what exactly the rule is. Otherwise, a certificate will be issued to the wrong entity, and it won’t be usable for the actual import and sale activities of the products.