Since 1993, the Russian Government enacted legislation obliging to certify a number of products and introduced the GOST R system of mandatory certification with the intention of protecting the health and the safety of Russian population.

Original or certified copy of Certificate of Conformity is required for customs clearance at the Russian border as well as for sale and / or marketing within the country.

The certified product should be marked by the registered GOST R sign (so called Mark of Conformity), which clearly demonstrates product compliance to the applicable Russian standards

1-Is Russian Certification Necessary For My Products? 

Russia is a unique country and has unique requirements for safety. If you plan to trade in Russia, you should know and understand the Russian requirements for certification.

Your product should conform to the Russian standards which are different and mostly not harmonized with the European or International standards. CE self-declaration is not recognized in Russia and cannot replace the Russian Certificate of Conformity.

Basically, almost all consumer products require the mandatory certification; it includes all food products, products for children, perfume and cosmetics, tableware and kitchenware, packaging materials, household and industrial equipment, etc.

2-Whether Obligatory or Voluntary Certification?  

Obligatory Certificate: This kind of certificate certifies the quality of actually supplied goods and their compliance with contractual terms. A quality certificate contains a profile of goods or confirms their compliance with certain standards or specifications of a delivery order. A certificate of compliance is intended for certification of goods produced by Russian companies or shipped to Russia by an importer-company. A certificate of compliance can be issued for a batch of goods and on a series production. In the former case a certificate is legalized for a company engaged in supplying goods to the Russian market. Its validity varies with terms of a sale contract. In the latter case a foreign manufacturer of supplied goods is both an applicant and a recipient of a certificate. This type of a certificate is valid for a period identified in a certification document. Certification is carried out by our specialists on production premises of a company seeking certification of goods it manufactures. On the basis of results obtained during testing samples of goods in a laboratory an appropriate certificate of series production compliance is issued.

There are cases where GOST certificate is issued when documents like: a hygienic report, a veterinary certificate, fire safety certificate, etc. are available. These all mean that we must receive all these documents for you before.

Voluntary Certificate: For products not subjected mandatory certification according to the Russian law, voluntary certification scheme may be applied. Exporters or importers initiate voluntary certification with the aim to formally prove the conformity of their products to the applicable Russian standards, technical norms or recipes. In other words, GOST Certificate of Conformity is a powerful marketing tool to capture Russian customer.

3-What Does Hygienic Certificate Mean?  

The hygienic certificate confirms conformity of products and services to the sanitary norms and strict observance of the established rules in the process of manufacture, storage, transportation and the sale of products and services.

The term of validity of hygienic certificate may be set up for 5 years. In the certain cases, (manufacturing of experimental sets of new kinds of production, implementation of essentially new technologies, using non-conventional raw material or components), validity of the hygienic certificate may be reduced. In this case concrete conditions (rules) of manufacturing have to be defined in the hygienic certificate.

The following types of products are subjected to mandatory hygienic certification:

4-What May Require Russian Certification?   

According to laws of the Russian Federation, more than 70% of all products to be sold and used in the Russia require mandatory certification. This concerns both locally produced and imported goods.

Currently there are over 30 federal laws regulating mandatory certification. The list of products subject to mandatory certification is provided in the Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation from 13.08.97, and updated in 29.04.02.

Based on this list Gosstandard together with the Russian Customs Committee has enacted the List of Products, which needs mandatory certification prior to release onto territory of the RF.

The Russian certification systems regulate laws: