The pre-export verification of conformity programme for certain Chinese imports into South Africa is gone before it ever ran. The Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition withdrew the directive in full on 22 September 2026, two days after it was due to come into operation. No Certificate of Conformity will be required under it. The withdrawal says in terms that it does not affect any obligation under a compulsory specification.
So a brand importing fittings, fixtures or components has been spared a piece of paper it was about to need, and none of the obligations behind it. What an inspector, a registered person or a contractor asks for on site is unchanged.
What exactly was withdrawn?
The directive titled "Implementation of a Pre-Export Verification of Conformity Programme for Certain Unregulated Products Imported from the People's Republic of China" was withdrawn in its entirety. It was published as Government Notice 7284 in Gazette 54374 on 20 March 2026, and was to come into operation six months after publication, on 20 September 2026.
In practice it never started. In late June the SABS, together with the dtic, put on hold all activities to operationalise the programme, including exporter registration and onboarding, after comments received through the WTO's Technical Barriers to Trade process.
The withdrawal is Government Notice 7947 in Gazette 55432, issued under section 33 of the Standards Act, 2008. Its operative clauses are short, and each one matters to an importer:
- The directive is withdrawn from the date the notice was published in the Gazette, which is 22 September 2026.
- From that date no Certificate of Conformity is required under the directive as supporting documentation for importing products that fell within its scope.
- No new application for a certificate will be accepted or processed under it.
- Any application still pending is closed administratively, and the applicant is to be notified.
If you had an application in the system, you do not need to chase it. It will be closed. If you had budgeted for pre-export verification on an order leaving China this quarter, this directive no longer requires it.
What the directive covered, and what it did not
The title is the part most people will skim past, and it is the part that decides how much has changed. It covered "certain unregulated products", and the directive defined that by exclusion. Clause 1.2 says it applied only to products not subject to compulsory specifications administered by the NRCS. Clause 2.2 says a listed product that later became subject to a compulsory specification would fall out of its scope automatically.
Conformity was to be checked against the applicable South African National Standards or recognised reference standards, within the SABS's mandate. The China Certification & Inspection Group (CCIC) was named as a cooperating body only, with no regulatory force of its own.
The products themselves were listed in Annexure 1, which is not in the gazette copy published on gov.za. Adams & Adams and Plumbing Africa both report 25 product categories, including plumbing components and solar panels. Adams & Adams also lists building and construction materials.
Clause 3 of the withdrawal then does the rest of the work. It says the notice does not affect any obligation imposed under a compulsory specification. Nor does it touch customs, border management, consumer protection, health, safety or sector-specific legislation.
Read together, the plain meaning is this. The pre-export certificate was designed as an extra check on goods that sat outside the compulsory specifications, and the directive said so itself. Removing it takes that extra check away before it began. It does not relax a single rule for goods that were already regulated, and it creates no new route around them.
Where the check sits
For an unregulated product from China, the position is the one that held before March: nothing requires a conformity check before the goods land. The first person who does check is the contractor or registered person installing it, and they are looking with their own liability in mind.
Electrical work shows how that plays out. Regulation 5 of the Electrical Installation Regulations requires components to comply with the relevant standards. Regulation 5(2) requires proof of that compliance to be identifiable on the component itself, or certification to be available from the manufacturer or supplier. Under regulation 9(3), the registered person must refuse to issue the certificate of compliance until a defect is put right.
That registered person is the one described in our piece on who may issue an electrical certificate of compliance. The regulation puts the burden of proof on the supplier's marking and paperwork. No gazette notice in the week to 2 October 2026 shifted it.
So the withdrawal spares an importer a certificate and the verification behind it. It does not spare the brand the question an installer asks on the day, which is where the proof is. If the plan was for the answer to be "the pre-export certificate", it now has to be the marking and the manufacturer's data.
The other notice in the same week
Trade policy did not loosen across the board. On the same day the International Trade Administration Commission (ITAC) published Notice 4162 of 2026 in Gazette 55437. It concludes a sunset review of anti-dumping duties on steel ropes and cables over 32mm in diameter from Germany and the United Kingdom.
ITAC found that letting the duties expire would likely lead to continued dumping and a recurrence of material injury. It has recommended to the Minister that the current duties be maintained, as set out in Report 786. That is a recommendation. As at 2 October 2026 no ministerial decision had been published, and until one is, a brand pricing heavy wire rope for lifting, lifts or cranes should assume the duty stays.
Read the two notices side by side and the direction is consistent. The state has dropped a certificate that would have applied only to goods outside the compulsory specifications, and is keeping a trade remedy where ITAC found injury likely. Our piece on the steel safeguard duty shows what the second kind does to a contractor's rate.
What this means for a brand selling into sites
A contractor forty people strong does not read the Gazette. They read the component, the carton and the data sheet you send when asked. The withdrawal removes nothing from that list, and for unregulated goods it removes a document that was meant to arrive before them.
Arabella Infrastructure Solutions is a Johannesburg-based building maintenance and construction company that sits between brands and the registered people who sign installations off. That means it hears about a refused sign-off on the day rather than through a returns report a quarter later. What that covers for a brand is on the brand page.
On Monday
Pull the product files for anything you import from China that you had expected to put through pre-export verification. For each one, check what the installer will see with no certificate behind it: the marking on the product itself, and the manufacturer's data you can send on request.
Where you were counting on the pre-export certificate to be your proof, ask the factory for the test data now, while the order relationship is still warm. It is the document a registered person will ask for.
