Quality & Compliance
Most rejected shipments could have been caught before they left the factory. A pre-shipment inspection gives you one last checkpoint before goods are loaded — and the window to fix problems without paying for rework, reshipping, or unsellable stock closes.
A pre-shipment inspection (PSI) is a physical quality check carried out when production is 80–100% complete — usually at the factory, before goods are sealed and loaded. An inspector, either employed by a third-party agency or sent by you, examines a statistically determined sample of the batch against your purchase order specifications and any regulatory requirements for your target market.
The goal is simple: make the decision to ship or hold before you release payment and before the container leaves China. Once goods clear Chinese customs and enter the EU, your options shrink to a dispute you are unlikely to win or a voluntary recall you will definitely pay for.
The inspector counts finished units, checks carton quantities against packing lists, and verifies that inner packs match the agreed configuration. Shortfalls discovered at the factory are cheap to resolve; shortfalls discovered at your warehouse mean unpacking costs, supplier disputes, and delayed listings.
Using AQL sampling (covered below), the inspector randomly draws units and examines them for defects: scratches, colour inconsistency, poor assembly, surface finish, incorrect components, and any deviation from the approved sample. Each defect is graded as critical (safety risk or renders product unusable), major (affects function or customer satisfaction), or minor (cosmetic, unlikely to affect the purchase decision).
For anything with moving parts, electronics, or safety-critical mechanisms, inspectors test that sampled units work. This ranges from battery charging cycles on electronics to load-bearing tests on furniture brackets — depending on what you specify in your inspection checklist.
Outer cartons, inner boxes, and product labels are checked against your specifications. This is the step that catches a supplier using cheaper packaging materials than agreed, printing the wrong country of origin, omitting a required warning statement, or shipping with outdated brand artwork.
The inspector verifies that required markings are present and legible: CE marking, the relevant safety warnings in the language of the destination market, REACH substance declarations, and — since December 2024 — the EU authorised representative contact details now mandated by GPSR on any product sold to EU consumers.
AQL (Acceptable Quality Limit) is the statistical framework that turns "check some units" into a defensible, repeatable process. Under ISO 2859-1, the lot size, inspection level, and your chosen AQL threshold determine the exact sample size and the maximum number of defective units allowed before a lot is rejected.
The EU consumer goods default is:
For a 5,000-unit batch at General Inspection Level II, the ISO table gives a sample of 200 units. If two or more units fail on major defects, the lot is rejected. You get statistically meaningful confidence from inspecting just 4% of the production run — which is why PSI is cost-effective at almost any order volume above a few hundred units.
The General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), which came into full effect across all EU member states in December 2024, shifted meaningful legal liability onto importers. Under Article 11, EU importers must verify that the manufacturer has fulfilled all obligations — including maintaining technical documentation for ten years and appointing an EU authorised representative — before placing goods on the EU market.
That obligation is not discharged by a supplier email saying "we are CE compliant." It requires:
A PSI that includes a compliance document check — where the inspector physically verifies that the DoC on the production batch matches the approved documents, and that the EU rep contact appears on the label — is your evidence of importer due diligence. That evidence matters if goods are ever challenged by a market surveillance authority or flagged in a Safety Gate notification.
A failed inspection is not the end of the shipment. It is the start of a negotiation you have leverage in, precisely because payment has not been released. Typical outcomes:
All of these options close once the container lands at your 3PL. After that, your only choices are returns, recalls, or absorbing losses — none of which a supplier is contractually obliged to help with unless your purchase order specifically requires it.
Most EU importers use a third-party inspection agency. The leading firms — QIMA, Bureau Veritas, SGS, Intertek, and Eurofins — maintain inspectors across China's manufacturing hubs and can typically schedule within two to three working days. A standard man-day inspection costs between €250 and €400 plus travel if the factory is outside the main city clusters.
Deploying your own QC representative to China makes sense once annual China spend reaches roughly €1M or more. Below that level, third-party agencies provide better geographic coverage, standardised reporting, and no risk of the relational pressures that develop when a buyer-side inspector visits the same factory repeatedly.
Whichever route you choose, the inspection checklist must come from you. Agencies inspect what you tell them to inspect. A generic "standard PSI" without a detailed, product-specific checklist leaves gaps — particularly on compliance markings, where the inspector will not know which directives apply to your product category unless you specify them.
Request the inspection when production is 80–100% complete. Too early and you are reviewing work in progress; too late and the goods may already be loaded. A practical rule: instruct your supplier to notify you when 80% of the batch is finished, then book the inspector within 48 hours of that notification.
Tie the balance payment to a passing inspection report. A common EU–China payment structure is 30% deposit at order placement and 70% balance against shipping documents. Changing that trigger to a passing PSI report, rather than any shipping document, shifts the incentive structure significantly. Suppliers who know payment depends on a pass are materially more attentive to the final production run.
A single PSI answers: "Is this specific batch safe to ship?" It does not answer: "Is this supplier worth continuing with?" For that, you need pattern data — the same defect categories recurring across multiple orders, compliance shortcuts appearing consistently, a DoC that changes supplier names between shipments without explanation.
This is the intelligence layer that SinoSource builds into every monthly report. Beyond the shipment-level quality check, clients receive supplier performance context, EU regulatory updates relevant to their category, and Safety Gate notifications for products in their niche — so each inspection decision is informed by the latest market surveillance data, not just the most recent order.
Run the Safety Gate monitor and sample report workflow before you commit to a supplier.