Construction Products Case Study – Tuffa Tanks

The Challenge

This construction products case study focuses on Staffordshire based TUFFA UK Limited is specialist manufacturer and supplier of tanks for the storage of water, heating oils, kerosene and diesel fuels. The family owned business offers a personal and professional service to its customers who use TUFFA products for commercial, industrial, agricultural and domestic applications. A recent change in the industry had seen the majority of the TUFFA’s competitors starting to CE Mark their products under the Construction Products Directive, so to avoid missing out on any potential business; TUFFA decided to CE Mark their products to EN 13441. With no prior knowledge of CE Marking, Jackie Shenton, Director of TUFFA UK, turned to the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) and CE Marking Association for help.

The Scope

West Midlands MAS setup a programme to assist TUFFA UK with CE Marking their range of tanks. During the programme, Jackie met with MAS and, aided by the CE Marking Association, were able to provide support to address and comply with the European product compliance requirements. Employing a knowledge transfer process, we performed a gap analysis to the new standard and helped to generate a technical construction file for their range of storage tanks. The attestation level of the standard required TUFFA to go to a Notified Body for initial type testing. During the process of approaching Notified Bodies for a quote, we assisted TUFFA and attended meetings with Notified Bodies to help obtain the best quote.

The Result

TUFFA UK now understands how to CE Mark and has the ability and the knowledge to ensure that their entire range of products meeting the requirements in the relevant European Directives and Standards. The assistance with the Notified Body saved TUFFA approximately £10,000 in testing, because originally the Notified Body wanted to test each product, but CE Marking Association successfully argued that testing a representative sample would be more suitable, due to the similarities in the products. TUFFA are currently going through the testing with the Notified Body (which takes 15 months to complete) and hope soon to be able to CE Mark their products as soon as they pass the tests.

For more help and advice on CE Marking a construction product, then please call us on 01564 792349