Certificates are easy to display. Here is what ours actually cover.
Every salt exporter website has a wall of logos. Very few explain what each one covers, which ones your buyer will actually ask for, or what a real certificate of analysis contains. This page does all three — including how to check us.
What we hold, with numbers you can check
Certificate numbers and expiry dates belong on this page, not behind a contact form. A logo without a number is decoration.
| Certification | Scope | Certificate no. | Issued by | Valid to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ISO 9001:2015 | Quality management, all sites | [number] | [certification body] | [date] |
| ISO 22000 | Food safety management | [number] | [certification body] | [date] |
| HACCP | Edible and bath grade lines | [number] | [certification body] | [date] |
| GMP | Processing and packing hall | [number] | [certification body] | [date] |
| FDA foreign facility registration | Food for US export | [FFR number] | US FDA | Biennial renewal |
| Halal | All edible product | [number] | [certifier] | [date] |
| Kosher | Edible lines, dedicated equipment | [number] | [agency] | [date] |
What each certificate actually covers and which ones your buyer cares about
Not all of these carry equal weight with a US food buyer. Ranked by how often they actually decide a deal.
| Certification | What it actually means | Does a US buyer ask for it? |
|---|---|---|
| FDA registration | Not a quality endorsement at all. It is a mandatory administrative registration of the foreign facility in FDA's database, renewed biennially, and a legal precondition for exporting food to the US. It says the facility exists and is registered nothing about how good the salt is. | Yes legally required. Buyers will ask for the number. |
| BRCGS | A rigorous, GFSI-recognised private standard. Because GFSI recognition lets large retailers accept it instead of running their own audit, it is the certificate that opens major retail and private-label accounts. | Yes often the deciding one for supermarket and branded private label. |
| HACCP | A systematic method for identifying and controlling biological, chemical and physical hazards. It is a plan and a discipline rather than a single certificate from one governing body certification is issued by a third-party auditor against a HACCP-based scheme. | Yes a baseline expectation for any food-contact export operation. |
| ISO 22000 | A food safety management system standard that wraps HACCP principles inside an ISO-style management system. Internationally recognised, though not GFSI-benchmarked on its own. | Often accepted by mid-size and international buyers. |
| Kosher | Certifies compliance with Jewish dietary law. For plain mined salt this is largely about equipment dedication and supply-chain integrity rather than the mineral itself. | Yes, more than people expect. Widely read as a general quality signal by US grocery buyers, well beyond religious consumers. |
| ISO 9001 | General quality management process consistency, documentation, continuous improvement. It says nothing food-specific. | Sometimes, as a baseline maturity signal. Never sufficient on its own for food. |
| Halal | Certifies compliance with Islamic dietary law again, for mineral salt this is a process and cross-contamination question. | Niche but real, for buyers supplying Halal-certified manufacturers or Gulf markets. |
| GMP | Baseline hygienic and operational practice: sanitation, pest control, personnel hygiene, equipment maintenance. It is the foundation that HACCP and ISO 22000 sit on top of. | Assumed rather than requested, but auditors will check for it. |
| "Organic" | Not a thing for salt. Salt is a mineral, not an agricultural product, so it falls outside organic certification schemes in most jurisdictions. | No. A supplier advertising "organic Himalayan salt" is describing a certified facility handling it, or describing nothing. |
What a real COA looks like, and what a fake one looks like
During our competitor research we could not find a single Himalayan salt exporter publishing an actual lab-issued certificate of analysis. Several publish a mineral table in HTML with no letterhead, no lab name, no batch number and no signature. That is a marketing graphic, not a test result.
A genuine COA has all of the following. If any are missing, ask why.
- The laboratory's letterhead, address and accreditation reference
- A batch or lot number that matches what is printed on your bags
- Sample receipt date and report date, both of them
- The test method against each parameter, not just a number
- Units and limits of detection "not detected" is meaningless without a detection limit
- A named analyst or authorised signatory
- A report number you can quote when you telephone the lab to verify it
That last point is the real test. Call the laboratory, quote the report number, and ask them to confirm they issued it. It takes four minutes. We would rather you did it than took our word.
You will see the same "84 trace minerals" table on dozens of salt websites, character for character. It is copied from a single decades-old analysis that circulates through the industry. It is not a test of the salt you are being offered, and it should never be accepted in place of a lot COA.
Parameters on our standard edible COA
- Sodium chloride, dry basis97.0–99.0%
- Moisture, LOD 110 °C≤ 0.5%
- Matter insoluble in water≤ 0.8%
- Lead (Pb)≤ 2.0 mg/kg
- Arsenic (As)≤ 0.5 mg/kg
- Cadmium (Cd)≤ 0.5 mg/kg
- Mercury (Hg)≤ 0.1 mg/kg
- Copper (Cu)≤ 2.0 mg/kg
- Particle size distributionSieve analysis
- Anti-caking agentNone added
Available on request, chargeable
- Full microbiological panel$120–$260
- Extended heavy metals$90–$180
- Radiological screen$140–$300
- Microplastics screenQuoted per lot
- Per-pallet rather than per-lotQuoted
Prices are what the laboratory charges us, passed through without markup. We will show you the lab invoice if you ask.
What gets tested, when, and who can stop a shipment
At the seam
Visual sorting. High-insoluble and dark-banded rock is separated and routed to industrial grades rather than crushed in with food stock. This is the cheapest quality control in the whole process and the most skipped.
On the line
Metal detection before packing, with rejects quarantined rather than re-fed. Moisture check at bagging as well as at lot release a control we added after a monsoon-season failure described in our case studies.
Per lot
A sample from every lot goes to a third-party laboratory before release. Not every quarter, not on request every lot. The report ships with the goods automatically.
Before loading
Packing list reconciliation, bag count, seal number, and photographs of the loaded container sent to you the same day. If something looks wrong, you find out in Jhelum rather than at the port.
Who has authority to stop
Our Head of Quality can hold any lot without sign-off from sales or from the managing director. That sounds like an organisational detail; it is the single most important line on this page. In most small exporters the person who wants the container to sail is also the person who signs the release, and that is how out-of-spec product reaches a customer.
We publish this because you can test it during an audit. Ask our production manager who can stop a release, then ask the same question in the quality office, and see whether the answers match.
Our replacement clause, in full
"Where any lot is demonstrated by a mutually acceptable third-party laboratory to fall outside the agreed written specification, the Seller shall replace the affected quantity on the next available sailing at the Seller's cost, including freight, or issue a credit at the Buyer's option."
It goes in the contract, not on a homepage. Ask for it to be included and we will not argue it is already our standard wording.
Six ways to check us, and any other supplier
We would rather be checked than trusted. Every one of these takes under fifteen minutes.
- Verify the FDA registration. Ask for the facility registration number and confirm it independently. A supplier who cannot produce one cannot legally export food to the US.
- Phone the laboratory. Take the report number off a COA and call the lab to confirm they issued it. Forged COAs exist in this trade and this is how you catch them.
- Ask for an unannounced video call. Not a scheduled tour a call, now, from the packing hall with the line running. Anyone who needs three days to arrange that is arranging something.
- Check import records. Trade-data services show whether a company has actually shipped to your country and at what volume. A firm claiming ninety countries with no traceable shipments is worth a second look.
- Reverse image search their photos. If the same factory picture appears on ten other exporter websites, none of them own the factory.
- Ask who signs off quality, by name. Then ask for that person on a call. Vagueness here is the most reliable warning sign we know.
"200+ countries served" there are fewer than 200 countries, and we saw that exact claim on a competitor site during research. And "in-house laboratory" ask what equipment, what accreditation, and whether the results are accepted by your own QA team. An in-house lab is a useful production tool and is not a substitute for third-party testing.
An honest note on specification limits
The heavy-metal figures quoted across this industry lead under 2 mg/kg, arsenic under 0.5, and so on are typical buyer specifications and Codex-adjacent reference values. They are not a single codified United States legal limit for salt, because no such limit exists specific to salt.
What actually governs your shipment is your own internal specification, or your retailer's. So the useful thing for us to do is not quote our numbers at you but ask for yours, and then tell you honestly whether our material meets them. If it does not, we would rather say so than ship and argue later.
Two other reference points worth knowing. The Codex standard for food-grade salt sets a minimum of 97% sodium chloride on a dry basis, and specifies copper directly at a maximum of 2 mg/kg while deferring other contaminants to the general Codex contaminants standard. And hand-mined pink salt typically analyses between 96% and 99% NaCl which means the bottom of the natural range sits right on the Codex line, and anyone quoting you "99.9% pure Himalayan salt" is describing a refined, recrystallised product rather than hand-mined rock.
Consumer-facing reporting on contaminants in sea and rock salt has grown, and buyers increasingly ask about it. We would rather you asked us with a test in hand than read something alarming and quietly moved on. Ask for the panel and we will run it at cost.
Send us a spec — we quote within one working day
Tell us the grade, grain size, packing and destination port. You get a written quotation, a specification sheet, and a sample on its way the same week. Trial orders start at 25 kg.