SABER and SASO certification for Saudi Arabia

SABER is the online platform through which Saudi Arabia clears imported goods, run by the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization. It issues two separate documents and a shipment needs both: a Product Certificate of Conformity, the PCoC, which is obtained once per product from a SASO-notified conformity assessment body and is valid for a year, and a Shipment Certificate of Conformity, the SCoC, which is obtained per consignment and is what customs actually asks for. The account is held by the Saudi importer, not by the exporter, and food, cosmetics, medicines and medical devices do not use SABER at all — they clear through the Saudi Food and Drug Authority instead.

Two certificates, and only one of them is per product

The PCoC is the conformity assessment. The importer registers the product in SABER, the platform determines whether it falls under a Saudi technical regulation, and where it does the importer selects a conformity assessment body notified by SASO for that regulation. That body reviews test reports and the technical file and issues the PCoC, which lasts a year and covers the product rather than any particular consignment.

The SCoC is the customs document. It is requested per shipment against an existing PCoC and against the commercial invoice, and it is what the broker presents at the port. A valid PCoC with no SCoC clears nothing. The two are priced separately and the SCoC recurs for the life of the trade, which is the part most often left out of a first landed-cost calculation.

Products outside the scope of any Saudi technical regulation are not exempt from the platform. They are handled on a lighter route — a self-declaration by the importer rather than a notified body assessment — but they still need an SCoC per shipment, and they still have to be registered.

The account belongs to the importer, and that has consequences

SABER is entered through a Saudi commercial registration. There is no exporter-side account and no way for a foreign manufacturer to hold the certificates directly, so every SABER project runs through a Saudi importer or through a party acting in that capacity.

This makes the certificate commercially specific in a way an EAC certificate or a CE declaration is not. The PCoC is raised under one importer’s account; a second importer for the same product raises a second one. Where a brand intends to appoint more than one distributor, or to change distributor later, that is worth deciding before the first PCoC is bought rather than after.

It also means the technical evidence travels to a party you do not control. Test reports, the bill of materials, and factory information go into an account held by your customer. Manufacturers who are not comfortable with that generally place the account with an independent representative instead.

Electrical goods have a shortcut, and it is worth taking

Where a product already holds an IECEE CB test certificate and report, SASO recognises that work through the SASO IECEE Recognition Certificate rather than requiring the testing to be repeated in full. National differences still have to be covered, and the Saudi deviations are real, but the bulk of the safety testing is accepted.

This is the single largest cost saving available on the Saudi route for electrical and electronic products, and it is only available to a manufacturer who commissioned the CB report in the first place. Where a product is going to both the Gulf and Europe, commissioning the testing as a CB scheme project rather than as a one-market job is a decision made before the first laboratory booking and cannot be retrofitted afterwards.

What sits outside SABER

Food, beverages, dietary supplements, cosmetics, medicines and medical devices are the Saudi Food and Drug Authority’s territory, and they clear on SFDA certification per shipment through the authority’s own systems rather than on a SABER SCoC. A cosmetics exporter looking for its product category in SABER will not find it, and the correct answer is not a lighter SABER route but a different authority.

Radio and telecommunications equipment carries an additional layer. Anything transmitting on the radio spectrum requires type approval from the Communications, Space and Technology Commission, formerly the CITC, and that approval is separate from and additional to whatever SABER requires of the same device as an electrical product.

Degradable plastics have their own regime. Saudi Arabia requires oxo-biodegradable certification for a defined list of plastic products — carrier bags, bin liners, wrapping and packaging films — tested at an accredited laboratory against the SASO requirement. Ordinary polyethylene film that meets no degradability standard is refused entry for those product codes, which is a specification problem rather than a documentation one and has to be solved at the extruder.

The Saudi Quality Mark is voluntary and sits alongside all of this rather than replacing any of it. It is a per-product mark backed by a factory audit and periodic surveillance, used as a retail and tender differentiator rather than as a border requirement.

Which Saudi document applies to what

Radio-transmitting equipment carries CST type approval on top of every row above; it is a separate authority and is not obtained through SABER. The regulated-product list is revised, and a product outside it today can be inside it at the next revision without anything about the product changing — check the current scope at the point of quoting rather than relying on the last shipment.