When the UK population went to the ballot box in June 2016 and voted to leave the European Union little was known about exactly what effect that would have on our rules and regulations which until then had been defined in European Law. When the UK finally left the Union at the end of January 2021 it triggered a change from EU to UK specific legislation that meant that CE marking of Construction Products in Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), which had been mandatory for certain construction products since 1988, would no longer be recognised and there would be a phased transition to a new form of Certification Mark, known as a UKCA (or United Kingdom Conformity Assessed) mark. The rules for Northern Ireland are slightly different.

The UKCA mark (and the CE mark before it) demonstrate that a product meets a particular set of ‘Essential Requirements’ laid out in what are now referred to as Designated Standards. ‘Essential Requirements’ are properties of a product which have to be met to ensure the product performs to a specified level and meet common requirements across the whole of Europe using a common technical language. For cement & aggregates for example there are ‘Essential Requirements’ to meet certain strength levels and ensure the product does not contain chemicals that could cause concrete and mortar to fail in service, leading to catastrophic failure of building elements and collapse of structures.

For now CE marking of construction products is still recognised and will continue to be until 1^st January  2023 at which point any product placed on the market in Great Britain will have to bear a UKCA mark.

Having been issued on 1^st January with new Conformity Certificates from our third party certification body CPC (a subsidiary of QSRMC), who now found themselves referred to as an ‘Approved Body’, CEMEX formed teams consisting of technical, commercial, systems and marketing experts within each business to attend to the finer details of making the transition. These teams have been working hard on ensuring the changeover to UKCA marking has been as smooth as possible. This meant ensuring that changes to packaging, delivery and sales documents, technical descriptions and websites were coordinated as far as possible and that all the requirements for UKCA marking were covered. Some businesses achieved this earlier in 2021 but the complexities involved in phasing in new packaging designs and paperwork within the cement business means that we have finally made the full transition as of 1st December.

What will this mean for employees and our customers? Well in actual fact other than being comforted by the fact that our products continue to meet stringent requirements laid out in product standards not a great deal. You may notice that that the UKCA mark is apparent now in place of the CE mark on our cement bags and paperwork but other than that its pretty much business as usual. For now the actual content of the bags and tankers will not change as the Designated Standards for our UK products are identical to their previous EU versions, although watch out for developments in the types of cement we produce as part of our ongoing commitment to sustainability. In time there is a chance that some standards might diverge from the EU versions, but this is unlikely and not something that UK manufacturers are likely to encourage.

In terms of our imported products and those supplied by third parties we are continuing to work with producers here and in the EU who themselves will need to obtain UKCA marks for their own products for us to continue to import or supply them for the Great Britain market after 1^st January 2023.

(Thanks very much to Richard Boult for this update).