2017 APLAC-PAC Joint Annual Meetings

The fourth Joint Annual Meetings for the Asia Pacific Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (APLAC) and Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (PAC) were held in Bangkok, Thailand from 16 to 23 June 2017.

One of the key highlights of the meetings was the various peer evaluation outcomes of APLAC and PAC including entry of new mutual recognition arrangement (MRA) members.

In APLAC, the new signatories are RusAccreditation (Russia) and NCA (Kazakhstan) for testing and calibration. Signatories that extended their recognition scope are KAN (Indonesia) and AAC Analitica (Russia) for proficiency testing providers.

In PAC, Mongolia joined as a new multilateral arrangement (MLA) signatory. Members that expanded their MLA scope includes ema (Mexico) for Information Security Management Systems (ISMS), Hong Kong Accreditation Service (Hong Kong) for Food Safety Management System (FSMS), PNAC (Pakistan) for product certification, and NACI (Iran) for Environmental Management System (EMS) and FSMS.

PAC has also endorsed the development of two new MLA programmes for certification of Medical Devices Quality Management System Certification (ISO 13485), and Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems (OSHMS).

Another significant outcome of these meetings was the endorsement from both APLAC and PAC membership to proceed with the merger. A new entity, Asia Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (APAC) will be established with effect from 1 January 2019. At the meetings, several issues including the constitution, governance structure, membership categories and voting rights were discussed.

SAC is part of the APLAC and PAC MRA network for accreditation of testing, calibration and medical laboratories, inspection bodies, proficiency testing providers, and certification bodies for quality management system, food safety management system, energy management system, environmental management system, and product.

We will continue our active involvement in the current entities and future APAC to drive wider recognition and acceptance of our accredited reports and certificates in the Asia Pacific region and globally. This will in turn strengthen the support we provide to Singapore-based enterprises for their goods and services in entering overseas markets.