Every compliance document a supplier sends is a PDF, and every PDF looks equally convincing. The useful skill is not spotting a bad Photoshop job — it is knowing which registry each type of document is supposed to appear in, and checking. This article is for companies importing commercial batches from China and sets out a protocol that takes minutes per document and does not require expertise in the underlying legislation.
The four ways a certificate fails
Before checking anything, it helps to know what you are looking for. A document can be:
- Fabricated — no such certificate was ever issued, sometimes accompanied by a fake verification website
- Borrowed — genuine, but issued to another company, often the trading firm that sits between you and the plant. Whether your supplier is that middleman is a separate question, covered in factory or trader
- Out of scope — genuine, but covering a different model, a different standard, or a laboratory scope that does not include the test performed
- Expired or superseded — genuine on its date, referencing a withdrawn standard edition or a lapsed designation
Only the first is forgery. The other three are far more common, entirely legal to produce, and just as useless to you.
Step 1. Check the document describes your product
Before any registry, read it. Does it name your exact model and configuration? Does it name the standard and its edition or year? Does the applicant match the company you are buying from? A report for "similar model" is not evidence about your goods, and a standard cited without an edition is a strong hint the template was recycled.
Step 2. Verify the notified body in NANDO
If the document claims a notified body, it will carry a four-digit number. Check it in the European Commission's database at ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/nando:
- Does the number belong to the organisation named on the certificate?
- Is the designation still active?
- Does its scope cover the legislation and product type in question?
A body notified for one directive cannot validly certify under another — a check that takes a minute and catches a surprising share of documents. The wider context is in CE marking and what it actually means.
Step 3. Verify the laboratory in the accreditation register
Test reports carry a laboratory name and usually an accreditation logo. Chinese laboratories accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 appear in the CNAS register, searchable in English at cnas.org.cn.
Two questions matter, and the second is the one people skip:
1. Does the laboratory exist in the register under that name and number? 2. Is the specific test standard inside its accredited scope? An accredited lab is accredited for a defined list of standards — not for everything it is willing to test. A report issued outside the scope carries the logo and none of the weight.
Major international bodies also run their own verification: SGS operates a document verification service, Intertek a certificate validation page, and TÜV Rheinland publishes certificates on Certipedia. If a report claims one of these names, verify it there rather than by email — a forged report is usually accompanied by a forged contact address.
Step 4. Check the conformity document in the market registry
Where the destination market runs a public registry, the document either exists in it or does not:
- EAEU — tech.eaeunion.org for certificates and declarations across the union
- Kazakhstan — techreg.kezekte.kz and the National Accreditation Centre register. Details in EAC certification for Kazakhstan and the EAEU
- China's CCC scheme — administered by CNCA, relevant mainly to goods sold inside China
Match the details, not just the number: product, manufacturer, applicant, validity, and — for batch-scheme documents — the contract they are tied to. Note also that private websites mirror these registries without updating them, so a document missing from a commercial copy proves nothing.
Not every market works this way. The EU has no central registry of declarations of conformity, because the manufacturer self-declares; Ukraine registers declarations only voluntarily, as explained in technical regulations in Ukraine. In those systems, verification means checking the evidence behind the declaration, not looking up the declaration itself.
Step 5. Confirm the issuer and the company
Two final checks:
- Contact the issuer directly, using contact details you found yourself rather than those printed on the document, quoting the report number.
- Confirm the supplier company exists as claimed — business licence, registration number and scope, verifiable in China's national enterprise credit information system. That check, together with an on-site visit, is the backbone of our factory verification protocol.
Red flags that make verification unnecessary
- A QR code or verification link that does not resolve — during the PPE fraud wave, fabricated certificates routinely came with sham verification sites
- The document is titled "certificate" for something that is self-declared and has no certificate, such as RoHS or, for most products, CE — see RoHS and REACH
- The issuer is a consultancy or trading company, not a laboratory or a designated body
- Directive or regulation numbers that no longer exist, or standards cited without editions
- Spelling errors in the names of legislation, bodies or standards
- The scan is a photograph of a printout, when a native PDF was available
- The supplier is reluctant to give the report number or to let you contact the issuer
Any single one of these justifies independent testing rather than further document review.
When to stop checking and start testing
Verification proves a document is real. It does not prove your goods match it. If the product is high-risk — electrical, children's, food-contact, PPE — or if the supplier is new, the cheaper path is often to stop auditing paperwork and commission your own test on samples pulled from production, alongside pre-shipment inspection. A test you commissioned, on units an inspector selected, is the only evidence with no chain-of-custody gap in it.
A certificate is a claim by a third party that something was true on a date. Verification asks a narrow question — did that party actually make that claim? — and it is worth asking, because roughly speaking, nobody does, and the whole economics of fake documents depends on that.
Verification as part of the buying process
We check documents against accreditation scopes and market registries, confirm laboratories and notified bodies rather than logos, verify the supplier's legal identity and premises, and commission independent testing where the evidence does not hold up. Seven years of doing this sits behind 3,500+ deliveries and 340+ verified suppliers — real projects are in our case studies.
Start with supplier verification or document support.
