CEC ‘Renewables’ secures standards certification

The CEC Renewables Department recently, in its efforts to commercialise the biodiesel plant sought to get product and process certification from the Zambia Bureau of Standards (ZABS). The certification process, though very demanding and requiring a lot of documentation such as standard operating procedures, quality manuals, policies, etc. is a major step in Product quality assurance to all customers. The CEC Renewables unit on the 15th of January, 2016 made an official application for ZABS product and process certification to the ZS 702:2008 and the international standard EN 14214:2003 of Biodiesel. Conformance to the local and international standards has many benefits as outlined below:

• Winning consumer confidence in the certified products resulting into increased market share and consumers’ ability to identify the products that conform to quality standards thus making quick decisions in favour of quality products.
• The product is presented with a better image in both national and international markets resulting into: mutual recognition schemes where countries recognize each other’s products thus easing entry into regional and foreign markets; easy acceptance and promotion of new products in the markets; and safeguarding the image and reputation of the manufacturer.
• Protection against unfair competition from inferior products on the market through: easy identification of the products that conform since they carry the quality mark; government and international bodies and NGOs rely on certified products for their purchases; and government is making it a requirement for local purchases to be certified.
• The certification scheme provides a technical audit of product quality and process control procedures. This means that the manufacturer gets technical advisory services and information at little or no cost that would otherwise be obtained at very high cost.
• Demonstration of due diligence to ensure products meet the relevant criteria for quality.
• Ability to break into new markets and maximise the potential of existing markets.
• Enables the product to stand out from the competition with a clearly visible mark representing quality.
• Demonstrates to current and prospective customers that the product has undergone a rigorous audit and testing process.

On the 2nd of March, 2016, the Zambia Bureau of Standards came for their first audit of the Renewables Unit to begin the certification process. The audit was very successful with only a few non-compliances noted by the ZABS auditors. The Renewables Unit responded to all the raised non-compliances within the stipulated time frame given by ZABS and in just over a month, on the 26th of April, 2016, certification was awarded to the Unit.

With the setting up of a testing facility, as had been envisaged the biodiesel product was fully compliant to the standards stated above by end of June 2016 as all the major analyses were conducted readily within the process plant with all the process controls and optimizations being in place. This has also boost the internal usage of the Biodiesel in the CEC fleet and help in reducing the costs. Furthermore, product quality compliance helps in marketing the product further to existing clients and bring on board new clients paving a way into commercialisation of the biodiesel plant.