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PART 3  – Fake certificate:

1. Why have the FAKE CERT?

The Certified Mill Test Report is a tool used to ensure that received raw material matches the engineering and purchase order requirements. There are clear requirements for what should go on the certificate but every so often someone tries to produce a fake mill certificate to sell steel plates fraudulently.

2. How to identify a FAKE STEEL MTCS?

• A fake mill certificate is normally fairly easy to spot if you know what you are looking for. You can sent them an email asking to vendor to clarify this certificate.
• These are key things that this fake mill certificate is missing or wrong.- Vendor name / company logo: supplier / manufacturer / stockholder… what company will be added on mill cert??? Pls take note that: only the company that produre this product, will issue the mill cert. Stockholder only buy product from the mill and keep them in stock until you require them (it means it is original company).
  – All products are sell will have a certificate to EN 10204. The type of certificate will be clearly stated
  – Because it is a certificate to EN10204 the certificate will also mention that the steel was produced to an approved quality system. For ex: BS EN ISO – 9001
  – If the certificate is to 3.1 or 3.2 it will have the test departments stamp.
  – And if it was to 3.2 it would have a mark from a classification society such as Lloyds Register, DNV, TUV etc. This certificate is to 3.1 and so this is not shown.
  – The mill will show their logo
• – And there will be a manufacturer’s mark

3. CONSEQUENCES OF FAKE MILL CERTIFICATES:

• The biggest problem is that if you buy steel with a fake mill certificate your customer may be able to reject all your work and refuse to pay you. That is because you will not have met his quality standards.
• From a quality perspective you also don’t have a proper audit trail of the material that you have used and that can cause you to fail your quality audit, suppliers audits and produce goods of significantly lower quality that will lose you business.

4. HOW TO AVOID A FAKE MILL CERTIFICATE:

 

• Do a google search on the name of the supposed mill. Is it a mill or a stockholder? If it is a stockholder or other company it is almost certainly fake.
• See if you have bought any product from that mill before – compare the certificates
• Ask your local stockholder if it is valid – they see a lot of certificates and will be able to compare
• Check with the mill – here you will be able to check the products and heat numbers directly. Based on these it will be clear whether the certificate is fake or not.
• Check to see whether the certificate is clearly in compliance with EN10168 and EN10204. It should say that it is compliant with a number of standards and will normally show how it is. Even if the plate is produced in China or India and according to local standards it should still be clear exactly what it is that you are buying and how it complies.

Do you have any good examples of a fake mill certificate that you can share?

Pls see previous part: part 1