Market Surveillance Project Update
With the new heating season approaching, ENplus® Management has concentrated efforts on implementing the Market Surveillance Project. This initiative is an additional measure taken by the scheme to ensure the high quality of certified products on the market. Under its scope, ENplus® certified bags randomly taken from the market in order to assure compliance with ENplus® standards.
Over the past few months, 43 pellet bags were randomly collected from countries such as Italy, Poland, Spain, Romania, Latvia and the Czech Republic. These bags belong to certified pellet producers and traders not only from these countries, as well as from Ukraine, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia, among others.
The pellets were analysed by ENplus®-listed testing bodies according to the ENplus® requirements. The results helped for the identification of issues like counterfeited bags (these are bags that do not belonging to certified companies), usage of non-approved bags by certified companies, issues that appeared after the bags left the premises of the certified companies (for example, non-conforming mechanical durability due to a bad transport/storage of the pellets ,or non-conformities related to the raw material used such as issues with ash).
In case of non-conformity, the certified companies were contacted and required to address the issues in accordance with their complaint management systems by conducting detailed investigation under the supervision of the certification bodies.
The Market Surveillance Project is just one of many activities the scheme conducts to guarantee the pellet quality. As from the beginning of 2025, the certified companies have introduced a serial number to their pellet bags which is key improvement in traceability especially when quality issues reported by end-users should be tracked down. The unannounced sampling added with the revision of the scheme a few years ago also contributes to ensuring that the quality is maintained before or after regular inspections. It also serves as an extra assessment on the corrective measures implemented by a company to address a complaint or resolve a non-conformity.
ENplus® is based on rigorous set of requirements and quality check-ups that have been developed and enhanced over the years to make sure only high-quality pellets are placed on the market. The scheme requires certified companies to have a proper quality management system in place and as well as to implement regular self-monitoring procedures – all this to ensure the compliance of their products to ENplus® standards.