Approvals and Certifications

How to qualify a Dow resin for your application

No one knows your industry more than you! Differing local, national, and international requirements for pipe mean that each individual case or project has to be considered separately. Use the links on the left for a summary of applicable approvals for a limited selection of Dow resins.

With many years of experience in the polyolefin pipe application area, we can help to ease the process of obtaining approvals by liaising with all relevant parties. Four specific features within Dow’s overall service offering can help us work with you to determine the best resin for your application:

  • Expert TS&D – Dow’s Technical Service and Development group (Horgen, Switzerland and Tarragona, Spain) provides the expertise, manufacturing and testing capabilities required to service most of the needs of the pipe market. Dow goes beyond offering resins, to providing a systems solutions approach to your business that can help you design end-use applications from the ground up to ensure superior use of our products and expertise.
  • CTSC-24X5 – Our technical service teams are available to help customers solve problems 24 hours a day, five days a week. The Customer Technical Support Center (CTSC) provides free, call-in technical support dedicated to customers, linked to technical experts around the world. The experts’ combined wealth of product experience translates into the kind of technical expertise, know-how, and skill needed to meet the changing industry requirements, particularly in the complex pipe market.
  • Testing Capabilities – Testing at external accredited testing bodies may sometimes be required to generate the technical information which cannot be determined internally. Very often Dow uses these external testing bodies for auditing purposes or to verify data previously generated by Dow. All products provided are verified or inspected as required, and Dow maintains excellent contacts with all the leading European organizations involved within the pipe industry.
  • Fabrication Simulation – To be sure a new pipe will be suitable for the use for which it is designed and that it can be made in your factory on a large scale, we will work with you to put our resins through fabrication simulations to give you the confidence to launch to market.

Meeting local requirements and environmental standards

It is vital for manufacturers and specifiers to be able to select products with confidence – not just in terms of performance in the application, but in terms of acceptability to what can be a rather complex system of approvals across different markets.

We maintain that a flexible, but dedicated approach is the best. We will work with you at a local level to establish your specific requirements, clearly identify applications and the necessary standards you will need to meet, and only then determine which resin would be most suitable for your needs.

Specifiers must adhere to multiple regulatory systems, differing standards at international and national levels, as well as certification standards. These are supported by the Center for European Normalization (CEN), which implements harmonization standards governing the production of plastic pipes and fittings in Europe. Eventually, corporate and national standards will be superseded by CEN standards, but it is unlikely that harmonized products will appear on the market in the very near future.

For additional information about approvals and certifications, please contact us or your local Dow representative.