SATRA discounts safety footwear tests

New standards set for safety footwear sold in Europe have created an unprecedented demand for testing at SATRA and the UK technology centre has responded quickly to prepare test programmes for CE marking * safety certifying * safety and protective footwear. As a result SATRA is discounting test fees for the new BS EN ISO 20344 safety footwear standards until the end of August 2005. Single sample test fees will be discounted by 20%, while multiple samples will be eligible for reductions up to 33%. These discounts are available to all footwear manufacturers and suppliers regardless of whether they are already SATRA customers or have had previous products certified at other Notified Bodies. Executive director Austin Simmons explains: 'While many of the old EN344 safety footwear tests have been retained, the new series of EN ISO 20344 standards introduce new preconditioning requirements. This means that previous EN344 data cannot be relied upon and almost all materials will need re-testing to confirm compliance with the new standards. SATRA has introduced these new discounts to encourage and help manufacturers change over to the new standards without delay and to reduce the financial impact.'