No, you definitely do not. Many products are required to be certified or “listed” by a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL). UL is just one option. Choose Intertek/ETL with superior customer service and faster turnaround times.
For many decades during the 1900s, if a manufacturer wanted to get an electrical product certified for workplace usage in the U.S. they had to send it to Underwriters Laboratories for approval. That all changed after an Anti-Trust lawsuit in the 1980s opened the market for competition. Today, Intertek is one of nearly 20 NRTLs recognized by OSHA to test and certify products.
The ETL Mark, which is found on millions of products sold each day across the U.S. and Canada, has grown to become one of the largest, most recognized marks of electrical safety certification in the world. We compete every day with UL for manufacturers' business, and we rely on superior service, faster turnaround times, and expertise to earn business.
If your company’s SOPs call for a UL mark, they are out of date. Perhaps it’s accurate to say the product must meet UL standards, but all NRTLs test to those standards. In fact, many of the leading authors of those very standards are engineers at Intertek and other testing laboratories. They sit on the technical panels that write the new versions of the standards, and then UL (along with ANSI and others) publish the standards and sell them. Intertek doesn’t create or sell standards. We only help our clients show compliance to them.
UL may have had its heyday 25, 50, 100 years ago, but today… it’s time for ETL.
Download our white paper The Essential Guide to Product Testing & Certification for more information on standards we test to for the North American market.
Related Links
ETL Mark Usage Guide
