On 31st December 2020 the UK will leave the EU Customs Union and the European Single Market.
European law requires that product sold in Europe meets all the required applicable product Directives covering safety, EMC, RoHS, energy requirements etc. A simple logo was adopted that could be placed on a product to indicate that all the required Directives are met and this is the CE mark denoting Conformité Européenne or European Conformity. Appropriately marked products are allowed free movement across all internal borders.
Once the UK leaves the Custom Union the CE mark will be no longer valid for products sold in the UK to denote conformity with the required legislation. An alternative mark has been devised to take its place and this is the UKCA mark. At this point products intended to be sold into both Europe and the UK will bear both marks.
The UKCA mark can be applied to a product on a self-declaration basis in the same way that XP Power currently applies the CE mark. A UK self-declaration of conformity (UK DoC) will be produced for each product to identify which particular piece of UK legislation the product conforms to.
The legislation will initially follow the European requirements meaning that for each European Directive there will be a corresponding piece of UK legislation.
For XP Power products the relevant Directives and regulations are:
Initially, conformity to the UK regulations can be demonstrated by meeting the same existing international or EN standards that are used for European Directive conformity. Although the UK will not recognise the European Official Journal (OJ), it is expected that a UK equivalent will be published over time.
Timeline
The UKCA mark can only start to be applied to product sold in the UK from 1st January 2021. There will be a grace period of 1 year to allow manufacturers to update existing product labels accordingly. During this grace period, it will be acceptable for product sold in the UK to only bear the CE mark. By 1st January 2022 all products sold into Britain must show the UKCA mark with products sold into Northern Ireland requiring a UKCA mark a year later on 1st January 2023.
New products that will be launched to the market on or after the 1st January 2021, will need to have the UKCA logo from the first launch.
XP Power intends to update product labels and produce corresponding UK DoCs during 2021 so that all product will be marked with both the UKCA and CE marks by the end of December 2021.
Andrew Bryars
Andrew Bryars graduated with an Honors Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and has worked in the power supply industry since 1990. He has been with XP for over 25 years and has held a variety of engineering, sales, and management jobs culminating in his present position as Senior Product Manager.
