Certification logos are easy to collect and easy to misread. This page states which certificate applies to which product, who holds it, and what it does and does not tell you.
Who holds what
| Certificate | Held by | Covers | Where you get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| ISO 9001 | the producing site | quality management system | with the specification pack |
| ISO 14001 | the producing site | environmental management system | with the specification pack |
| ISO 45001 | the producing site | occupational health and safety | on request |
| BRCGS Packaging | the producing site, where the line supplies food contact | hygiene for food-contact supply chains | with the specification pack |
None of these certifies a roll or a sack. They certify a site and a management system. A supplier who prints ISO 9001 next to a product code is telling you something about the factory’s paperwork, not about the film. Useful, but not the same claim.
Mervia Group holds none of them, and could not: they are issued in the manufacturers’ names. What we do is get the certificate for the site producing your specification — issuer, number, scope and validity — and send it with the specification pack, so the claim is attached to a plant you can check rather than to a logo on a website. A trading company that lists its suppliers’ certificates as its own is making a claim that would not survive an audit, and the same looseness usually shows up in specifications.
Product standards
EN 13592 — plastics sacks for household waste collection
Read the title carefully, because the scope is narrower than the way the standard gets quoted. It applies to sacks whose first use is household waste collection, and it explicitly does not apply to sacks that line a bin and are not lifted when the bin is emptied — which covers most wheeled-container liners.
So for a commercial refuse sack the standard is a shared language, not automatically a conformity claim. Two parts of it are used across the trade regardless:
Designation. A sack is described by useful width P and useful length L in millimetres — written 500/700 — not by a litre rating. Litre figures on retail packaging are marketing numbers and are not comparable between manufacturers. Our bin liner size finder converts a bin volume into the dimensions the standard uses.
Testing. Drop and impact tests at rated load. A sack that meets EN 13592 at its stated duty class has been tested carrying what it claims to carry.
EN 13432 — compostable packaging
Industrial compostability: disintegration, biodegradation, heavy metal limits and no adverse effect on compost quality. Applies to our caddy liners.
It is not home compostability, and it is not the same as “biodegradable”, which has no regulatory meaning. See sustainability for when a compostable liner is actually the right specification.
ISPM 15 — wood packaging for export
Heat treatment against timber pests, marked with the IPPC stamp. Required for wooden packaging leaving the EU; not required for intra-EU movements.
If you re-export goods on wooden pallets to a third country, the pallets must be treated from the start. Retro-treating a loaded pallet is not practical, and this catches out more shipments than any other wood-packaging rule.
Food contact
Food-contact grades are available across sacks and film, supplied with a declaration of compliance to Regulation (EC) 1935/2004 and, for plastics, Regulation (EU) 10/2011.
Food contact is a specification, not a general property. A sack is food-contact grade because it was made that way and documented; the same sack ordered without the specification is not, even if it comes off the same line. Ask for it explicitly and it will be on the order confirmation.
What certification does not tell you
A certificate confirms a system exists, not that your specific order was right. ISO 9001 means the plant has a documented quality process; it does not mean every roll on your pallet is in tolerance.
That gap is what pre-shipment inspection is for, and why we send the measured report with every order rather than a certificate and a promise.