Digital Product Passport guidance for the electronics sector. Covering repairability scoring, WEEE recycling compliance, battery passport requirements, and ESPR data fields for consumer electronics.
Electronics compliance guides for devices sold in the US, EU, and UK: FCC, CE and UKCA marking, RoHS and REACH declarations, WEEE, and energy efficiency rules.
An EU Declaration of Conformity for electronics is generated in four steps: identify the applicable directives, gather the conformity evidence, assemble the signed declaration, and publish a version buyers and authorities can verify.
Australia and New Zealand share a standards framework, a lot of product regulation, and one mark you'll meet in both: the RCM. If you sell electronics, electrical goods or anything with a radio Down Under, here's the system in plain terms — because the two countries share enough to be efficient and differ enough to trip you.
Three markets, roughly 1.7 billion consumers between them, and three marks that decide whether your electronics get sold or returned. Korea's KC, Japan's PSE, and India's BIS all sit on top of international safety standards, which means the good news up front: one test program can feed all three. What follows is what each mark actually requires.
Say you sell furniture into Mexico City through a distributor and it goes fine for a year. Then you add a lamp with a USB port to the range, and the next shipment is held at customs. The furniture sails through. The lamp needed a NOM certificate.
Mexico's Normas Oficiales Mexicanas, the NOM standards, apply selectively: some categories sail through, others can't cross the border without a certificate. These are the ones that matter, and what to do about them.
It usually goes like this: a distributor in São Paulo is selling your product well, and then a second container gets held at Santos for three weeks while customs keep asking for something called INMETRO.
Brazil has one of the strictest product certification regimes in the Americas, and it catches first-time exporters who assumed a CE mark or an FCC ID would be enough. It isn't. Here's how the system works and what to do about it before you ship.
Six countries, one customs union, and one mark for your power adapters. The Gulf region gets treated as a single market in trade agreements, but most small exporters learn the details one rejected shipment at a time. Here is the version we wish every electronics brand got before their first Dubai order.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman — requires the G-Mark for low-voltage electrical equipment sold in the region. If you sell chargers, appliances, lighting or AV gear there, this is your entry ticket.
Look at the label of any iPhone sold in mainland China and you'll see the CCC mark stamped next to the model number. It's a condition of sale, and Apple complies because there is no alternative: China has its own compulsory certification system, and it doesn't care about your CE mark or your FCC ID. Goods without the right certificate don't clear customs.
If you sell physical products into mainland China, the China Compulsory Certification (CCC) system decides whether your goods cross the border. This post covers how it works, what it costs, and what a small company can realistically do.
Electronics is the product category with the most regulatory diversity across the three major Western markets. The US requires FCC and UL. The EU requires CE Marking under the EMC Directive, the Low Voltage Directive (or Radio Equipment Directive for wireless devices), and RoHS substance restrictions. The UK requires UKCA marking which, for electronics, uses the same technical standards as the EU but requires separate conformity assessment and documentation. And an FCC test report is not valid for CE Marking. A CE Declaration of Conformity is not valid for UKCA.
This guide compares electronics compliance across the US, EU, and UK, and explains how to build multi-market compliance from a single test program and a single set of product data.
Not sure which EMC, safety, and substance regulations apply where? Use the Sustalium Global Compliance Map select Electronics and toggle between markets to see FCC, CE, and UKCA requirements side by side.
Starting an electronics brand costs more than most founders expect and not because of manufacturing. It is the testing and certification. Every electronic product sold in the US requires FCC compliance as a matter of federal law. UL certification is commercially mandatory even where it is not legally required. And if you sell on Amazon, you need both plus a General Certificate of Conformity before your listing goes live.
This guide walks through launching an electronics product with the compliance planned and budgeted from the start.
On the Sustalium platform, the gap we see between electronics brands that launch on time and electronics brands that delay their launch by months is pre-compliance testing. The brands that send a prototype to the lab for a pre-scan before the formal FCC test identify emissions problems while they can still fix them at the PCB stage. The brands that go straight to formal testing discover the problem when the test report says "fail" and they have already cut tooling.
Not sure which regulations apply to your electronics product? Use the Sustalium Global Compliance Map select Electronics and your target market, and see every framework from FCC and UL to e-waste and Prop 65.
An electronic product sold in the US is subject to a minimum of four separate regulatory frameworks and that is before counting state-level requirements, retailer demands, or packaging rules. The frameworks do not talk to each other. The FCC does not care about Prop 65. UL certification does not substitute for an FCC test report. And a CE Mark means nothing to US Customs.
This guide bundles every US compliance requirement that applies to electronic products into a single reference so you can see what you need, how the pieces connect, and where the overlaps with EU requirements exist if you are selling into both markets.