Product Lab Testing Costs: An Overview

When it comes to product compliance, one of the biggest obstacles facing importers and exports is the cost of lab testing. Third-party lab testing can cost a hundred dollars, or tens of thousands, depending on the number of applicable regulations, required tests, number of products, materials, and colors.

That said, there are ways to keep costs under control, but only if you have a basic understanding of how the lab test costs are structured.

In this article, you will learn how testing companies price their testing services, and what you can do to keep them down to a certain extent.

Article Overview

• Chemicals & Heavy Metals Material Testing
• Toys & Children’s Products
• Electronics
• Reducing testing costs
• - Option A: Reuse materials and colors
• - Option B: Avoid product changes
• - Option C: Focus on one country or market at a time
• - Option D: Obtain test reports from component and material suppliers

Chemicals & Heavy Metals Material Testing

Substance regulations, such as REACH and California Proposition 65, apply to essentially all consumer products. For example, REACH restricts that amount of lead, cadmium, and mercury. Products containing levels of restricted substances above the set limits cannot be sold in the EU.

Compliance can be verified through third-party lab testing, which is paid for on a material test basis.

As such, each you’re charged for each material and color that you need to get tested. Therefore, costs increase when you have a larger number of different materials and colors to get lab tested. That said, it’s sometimes possible to group various colors of the same material in one test, which reduces the overall testing cost.

Chemicals and heavy metals material testing can range from less than a hundred dollars to several thousand depending on the number of materials and colors.

Further, some materials are more expensive to test than others. This, in turn, depends on the number of ‘risk substances’ that the lab needs to check for the material.

Toys & Children’s Products

CPSIA (USA) and the Toy Safety Directive (EU) regulates various aspects of toys and other children’s products. Here are a few examples:

• Physical and mechanical properties (e.g. buttons and sharp edges)
• Chemicals and heavy metals
• Flammability
• Product labels

As such, testing costs are dependent on the following:

• The number of different materials and colors (as explained above)
• Whether the product has certain parts (e.g. plastic beads, buttons, zippers)
• The design of the product (e.g. edges)
• If the product is flammable
• If certain labels are required

It’s impossible to give a reference pricing point for children’s products as a whole. It all comes down to product design, materials, features, and overall risk.

Electronics

Electronics product testing covers not only electrical safety but also electromagnetic compatibility and radio communications. Further, the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive also restricts heavy metals in all electronics components and solder.

The more testing your electronic device requires, the more it will cost. Here’s a breakdown:

1. Is the electronic product a battery-powered device or powered by an AC adapter? (If the latter, you may also need to get the AC adapter tested).

2. Is the electronic product WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G, LTE, 5G or GPS enabled? (If yes, then additional testing is often needed).

3. Is electromagnetic compatibility necessary or required? (Perhaps not for a small batterypowered device, but likely so for machines or large LED displays, for example).

In short, larger electronic devices with wireless communications and AC adapters cost a lot more to test than small battery-powered devices.

Reducing testing costs

Lowering your testing costs requires that you first understand the basics of lab test pricing structures. That’s what the first part of the article is about. In this second part, I also explain what measures you can use to significantly reduce your testing cost.

Option A: Reuse materials and colors

As mentioned, testing costs increase when you use a larger number of materials and colors. As such, you can achieve significant cost reductions by using the same materials and colors on more than one product.

Option B: Avoid product changes

It’s often tempting to make design, material or component changes to existing products - either developed by your company or a manufacturer. That said, existing test reports and other compliance documents (e.g. Children’s Product Certificate) are often invalidated if you change the design, material, components or even the color. In other words, don’t make product changes unless absolutely necessary.

Option C: Focus on one country or market at a time

Product regulations often refer to specific national or harmonized product standards, which in turn require lab testing. As such, your testing costs can double if you intend to get your product lab tested according to both the European Union and United States product standards. If you then keep adding other countries to that list, such as Australia, China, Japan, and Canada, your testing costs go up even more.

Keep in mind that this can be the case even if the applicable standards are nearly identical.

In other words, focus on one country or market at a time if you want to keep costs reasonable.

Option D: Obtain test reports from component and material suppliers

There are times when you can actually use existing test reports held by suppliers. Take quartz watches for example. Most quartz movements are manufactured by Japanese and Swiss companies, such as Citizen (Miyota), Seiko and Ronda. Their movements are tested and compliant with the RoHS directive, which restricts heavy metals in all components.

This is also the case for other components. Why get a battery tested when you can procure battery directive (also a heavy metals regulation in the EU) compliant batteries from Sony or Samsung?

Likewise, you can also procure brand name AC adapters.

Even if “brand name” components can be more expensive, it’s often the exact opposite when you factor in what you save on lab testing fees.