New Accreditation Service for Reference Materials Producers in Colombia

After 17 months of joint work between the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA) and the country project of the Global Quality and Standards Programme (GQSP) implemented by UNIDO, the National Accreditation Body of Colombia – ONAC presented its new accreditation scheme for reference materials producers according to ISO 17034:2016. The launching event held on July 6, was attended by more than 400 people in person and virtually, confirming the importance of this new capacity for the country’s quality infrastructure.

“Reference materials are a keystone for chemical metrology and the accreditation of testing laboratories”, as highlighted by Carolina González Müller, UNIDO representative in Colombia during the ceremony. For this reason, the GQSP Colombia worked in previous years together with the National Metrology Institute (NMI) to build a roadmap for the provision of these materials in the country. The GQSP sponsored the development of new reference materials by the NMI and the new ONAC accreditation service are part of this roadmap.

In a parallel and complementary manner, the GQSP Colombia provides technical assistance to 2 public laboratories and 2 private laboratories to implement the ISO 17034 standard. It is expected that these laboratories will be the first to access the new ONAC service and thus contribute to promoting the provision of reference materials in Colombia and to support the sustainability of the system, key to provide traceability to chemical measurements of Colombian products in international trade.

The Global Quality and Standards Programme (GQSP) Colombia, is funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism and Colombia Productiva.

For further information contact Juan Pablo Diaz-Castillo (j.diaz-castillo [at] unido.org (j[dot]diaz-castillo[at]unido[dot]org))