IN Brief:
- Element’s Skelmersdale site is now the first UK-based NRTL for hazardous locations able to issue U.S. certification directly.
- The move brings evaluation, testing, and certification into one UK laboratory, cutting overseas hand-offs and multi-site delays.
- For manufacturers of equipment used in explosive atmospheres, the change shortens the route to U.S. market access.
Element’s Skelmersdale laboratory has become the first UK-based site able to test and certify hazardous-location equipment directly for the U.S. market under Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory recognition, giving manufacturers a single-location route into one of the world’s most tightly regulated compliance environments.
The designation means the Lancashire site can now carry out evaluation, testing, and certification for hazardous locations within the same facility, rather than sending reports onward for final sign-off in the United States. For equipment makers working with products destined for explosive or otherwise hazardous environments, that removes a familiar bottleneck from the approval process and shortens the path from test programme to market entry.
The recognition also expands the practical role of Skelmersdale within Element’s wider compliance network. The site already supports electronics product certification, RF testing, global market access, and hazardous-atmosphere work spanning IECEx, ATEX, UKEX, and North American HazLoc requirements. With direct NRTL capability now in place, manufacturers targeting both European and U.S. approvals can keep more of that work inside one programme and, in some cases, inside one laboratory.
Fabian Schober, SVP of Element’s Connected Technology & Mobility business unit, said the approval reflects a wider investment in certification capability designed to reduce delay and duplication for customers. That matters in sectors where hazardous-location products often sit at the intersection of electronics design, enclosure engineering, safety compliance, and documentation discipline, and where even modest delays in final approval can hold up shipments, site installations, or broader product launches.
Element’s OSHA recognition listing places Skelmersdale among the recognised testing sites able to work against standards used in hazardous-location and industrial electrical equipment compliance, including UL 913, UL 508A, and NFPA 496. In practice, the significance is less about adding another badge to the wall than about changing workflow: reports no longer need to cross the Atlantic for a final certification hand-off before a U.S. mark can be issued.
That shift will be watched closely beyond Element’s own customer base. Hazardous-location certification remains one of the more procedural parts of industrial electronics development, and any move that brings testing, evaluation, and certification into a single site tends to expose how much time has historically been lost to fragmented approval chains rather than technical work.
