ATEX Certification and IECEx Certification of Equipment

ATEX is a legal prerequisite for selling within the European Economic Area, but IECEx gives maximum international acceptance and, if feasible, most customers elect to have certificates for both schemes issued at the same time.

We have long been recognized as being at the forefront of international product certification within the IECEx Equipment Certification Scheme, having issued more certificates in this field than any other certification body in the world. We are also one of the major Notified Bodies in Europe for issuing the documentation required by the European ATEX Directive.

A core principle of our operations is to encourage direct dialogue between our engineers and our customers’ engineers, avoiding the potential difficulties and misunderstandings that can occur when working through non-technical sales staff. Before a certification project is established, you are welcome to make use of our technical advice service to help you start the process of bringing your project to a successful conclusion.

There are two parts to product certification:

Type Examination is the process of assessing, testing and defining the prototype or representative sample
Production QA, or Product Verification, are alternative ways of confirming that future production is identical to the ‘type’ that was assessed

ATEX treats the two aspects separately and the manufacturer issues the ‘Declaration of Conformity’ that brings both parts together. IECEx requires that the certification body is responsible for ensuring all production supervision is in place and monitored in order for the on-line IECEx Certificate to be issued and remain ‘current’. The status of all IECEx certificates may be monitored from the on-line certificate database.

In this respect, IECEx may be regarded as a full Type 5 Product Certification System, whereas ATEX is a hybrid, encompassing the possibility, for some types of equipment, of a manufacturer issuing all documents directly, without involving a Notified Body.