Cleveland Cable Company awarded world-first Registered Stockist certification status

Cleveland Cable Company has become the first cable distributor in the world to be awarded Registered Stockist certification status. The new industry certification scheme has been designed by the British Approvals Service for Electric Cables (BASEC) to raise quality standards in the industry throughout the supply chain.

The Middlesbrough-based company has worked closely with BASEC, an organisation that partners with the worldwide cable manufacturing industry providing testing and certification services. Cleveland Cable Company piloted the assessment programme and provided valuable insight of their experiences during implementation, across UK and Ireland operations.

By meeting the stringent assessment process, Cleveland Cable Company has become accredited under the Registered Stockist scheme, validating its internal quality programmes, procedures and traceability lines.

Cleveland Cable Company regularly undertakes quality assessments to verify cable design and electrical properties to ensure they meet the required standards. This includes in-house testing of cables held in their own stock.

The company also regularly visit the overseas factories of its suppliers to undertake audits and to ensure professional quality management systems along with production line and test facilities meet the high standards required by Cleveland Cable Company and the UK market.

The BASEC Registered Stockist scheme forms part of the company’s established Market Surveillance initiatives to drive the improvement of cable quality and safety throughout the supply chain and industry, with rigorous certification, factory auditing and testing. Previously, the body only awarded certification to manufacturers of cable products, by providing them with independent and comprehensive testing to include electrical, mechanical, material, chemical and fire, CPR (Construction Products Regulation) to measure performance characteristics.

An important feature of the Registered Stockist Scheme sees BASEC conducting audits at cable distributors’ facilities and taking random product samples for independent testing at the BASEC laboratory. This is another step towards ensuring that the product that reaches the market is of the highest quality and safety.

As the UK’s largest cable stockist and one of Europe’s longest standing cable distributors, with eight operations across the UK and Ireland, Cleveland Cable Company provided BASEC with the opportunity to trial the new scheme.

As part of the review, which focuses on companies’ procurement, selling and compliance practices, BASEC rigorously inspected and audited Cleveland Cable Company’s management systems, as well as undertaking a testing programme of cable samples from its stock.

The audit confirms the quality of products at its facility are consistent with recognised standards and, importantly, with the specifications of cable products manufactured at source.

Alastair Powell, Managing Director of Cleveland Cable, said: “We are exceptionally proud to become the world’s first cable distributor to hold the BASEC Registered Stockist status.  We are at the forefront of the drive to deliver increased quality among cable stockists and distributors, which has now been recognised through the awarding of Registered Stockist certification by BASEC.

The status also demonstrates to the market our working relationship with BASEC, and our backing for the company’s commitment to exceptional standards in our industry, while also providing verification of our processes and the quality of the products we supply.”

Tony Lioveri, Chief Executive Officer at BASEC, said: “BASEC approvals previously only applied to manufacturers, but we have now extended our registered stockist scheme to encompass the end to end supply chain; with a focus on improving our market surveillance of products from source to end user.

Cleveland Cable is the first member of our Registered Stockist scheme, showing great commitment to driving higher levels of quality and safety for cable products, through rigorous approvals, before they enter the market. We have a close ongoing relationship with Cleveland and by becoming the first approved, they can give their customers confidence in the approved BASEC products that they supply, and of the quality of their operations.

“We hope through their leadership in supporting the scheme that they set the benchmark for others in the market to follow, with a common end goal of improving cable quality and safety.”