Assurance of Material Compliance

As the scale of industry specific quality standards for sealing materials continues to evolve at an ever-increasing rate, the ability of manufacturers, converters and end-users to keep pace with the technical changes and their requirements becomes ever more challenging.

MacLellan's have been developing new formulations and extending the technical abilities of our materials for over 140 years, and increasingly the test requirements necessitate specialist equipment, extensive laboratory facilities and external specialists.

A typical example of this is our FoodSafe Quality range of materials including standard white Natural, Neoprene, EPDM and Nitrile, Blue Nitrile and MacNetic Blue Metal Detectable Nitrile.

To comply with the EU1934:2004 Standard, these materials are required to meet stringent detection tests on extractable / leachable impurities from compounds, a specialist test needing analysis of parts per million (ppm).

We have added elimination of carcinogenic Nitrosamine compounds to our FoodSafe product characteristics - again a specialist test requiring a breakdown analysis of the cured compound.

Finally, the increasing global demand to eliminate the use of Animal Derived Ingredients (ADI) in our FoodSafe materials, and compliance to this requires analysis of compounds and evaluation of the supply chain activity.

To ensure complete market confidence in MacLellan's FoodSafe materials, these are independently tested by internationally recognised test centres with impeachable credentials who issue documented certification showing test results accordingly, with regular retesting and full release of batch test data as requested.

We have demonstrated before that comparing material data sheets with other manufacturers can be misleading if the test's methods have been subtly altered to infer a better performance (Chemours Viton A vs Indian Viton A).

We also now urge customers to look for independent validation and certification in areas such as:

especially where companies quote internal testing and infer self-certification as an acceptable justification for compliance.

To talk to one of our Team about material compliance, call 01902 307711