Navigating Covid-19: A Global Trade Facilitator

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the global supply chain, with a new normal characterised by remote working, learning and entertainment, an unprecedented demand for personal protective equipment (PPE), and accelerated digital transformation throughout the supply chain.

The backstage contributor to many of these business and social changes is the testing and certification industry. SGS, a world-leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company, has been helping many struggling businesses to transform their supply chains with a new remote inspection and auditing system. At the same time, the company has been helping Hong Kong PPE exporters to gain access to the worldwide market, while preparing the world to safely open up again for business.

SGS Hong Kong believes the city is well positioned as an international business hub and a regional trendsetter for both the consumer market and R&D development. It can therefore support local and foreign companies wanting to penetrate the Chinese mainland and ASEAN markets as the world economy starts to recover from the Covid-19 shakeup. 

Enabling Trade amid Global Pandemic

Covid‑19 is taking a great toll on the global economy, creating considerable challenges for health systems and supply chains worldwide. The unprecedented containment measures have included widespread border closures, travel bans and social distancing. These have made it impossible for many international traders to travel and conduct factory audits and quality checks on the nodes of their supply chains.

As a global trade and supply chain enabler, SGS has swiftly responded to these disruptions. As Chan explains, “while international buyers cannot visit their suppliers to check their factories in person due to the travel restrictions currently in effect, we have helped them to do so at distance using our remote technologies, video conferencing tools and on-the-ground inspectors. This has been useful in maintaining the supply chain in the first half of 2020.”

“SGS has worked in partnership with many international businesses for factory and product inspection over the years,” adds Chan. “With the SGS’s Remote Audit and Inspection Solution, QiiQ, traders can access all the raw data and documents collected by the on-the-ground inspection teams and give real-time responses during the inspection via video-conferencing software.”

Nurturing New Manufacturers

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 90 million surgical masks are needed every month during the Covid-19 outbreak, which is about double the market supply in 2019. Many enterprising Hong Kong businesses, including public transport operators, e-commerce platforms, beauty parlours, fashion brands and chemists, have started producing surgical masks in 2020. More than 100 PPE producers in Hong Kong have applied for a barcode starting with prefix 489 (meaning that the product is made by a registered company in Hong Kong) since the outbreak. This has led to a dramatic year-on-year surge of 424% in total exports of surgical masks and other made-up textile articles in 2020.

SGS has been serving as the quality gatekeeper of the Hong Kong PPEs. “We managed to scale up our Hong Kong operating capacity for testing PPE in just three months,” says Chan. “We’ve worked with the new mask manufacturers to guide them through the different health and safety requirements currently in place worldwide, while scaling up their ISO 14644-certified clean rooms, inspecting the quality of melt-blown non-woven fabrics from suppliers all over the world, and developing their production processes and management systems in compliance with the ISO 13485 standards and/or EN 14683 or ASTM F2100 end-product testing requirements. These standards have given new PPE manufacturers a big boost towards rapidly winning trust from international buyers.”

There is a growing interest in understanding the health impacts and benefits of a product, explains Chan. “SGS, as a third-party independent company, can provide the public with detailed, trustworthy testing and certification reports. For example, buyers can use the unique QR code we provided for our tested or certified products to access the relevant quality and compliance reports on our official platform.”

Chan sees greater transparency as the way forward for a broader range of consumer goods. “We are welcoming a new generation of consumers who are more educated. They are concerned with and able to understand the many different attributes of a product. These people might want to look up the laboratory test reports for surgical masks, or other consumer goods post-Covid-19. Brands and manufacturers also want to demonstrate their compliance with voluntary health, safety and environmental standards as a selling point. They want the public to see the money and effort that has been invested in testing and certifying their products to meet international standards, and so appreciate the value of the brand.”

Ensuring Safe Re-Opening

The experience of Covid-19 has led the public to expect a greater level of hygiene from many businesses, whether they are shopping malls, retail shops, hotels, offices or restaurants. This has great implications as we prepare for the safe resumption of the offline economy worldwide.

With this in mind, SGS has developed a certification protocol for hygiene control and environmental health management systems. “In addition to standard environmental sampling and testing of air quality and bacteria, we also help our clients to evaluate and improve the processes, mechanisms and management protocols for virus disinfection, particularly at human touchpoints,” explains Chan. “We use an overall hygiene management framework with different company-specific environmental settings and critical checkpoints. These voluntary hygiene measures are gradually becoming best practice for many private residential estates and hotels in Hong Kong and abroad.”

Readying for the Post-Covid-19 Mainland Market