Independence & compliance
CCI is not affiliated with any trading company. Three things are different.
This is the page buyers come to check, so it is written to be checked rather than admired. Four sections, in a fixed order: the three facts, where we came from, the three mechanisms, and where our responsibility ends.
Section 1 · The three facts
Three things are different.
01
Separate legal entities
CCI is its own registered company. It is not a division, a department or an agent of any trading company.
02
Separate legal representatives
The person who signs for CCI is not the person who signs for the companies whose goods we inspect.
03
No cross-shareholding
There is no cross-shareholding between CCI and any trading company.
Those three sentences are the whole answer, and they are the only three we add to. Employment history, office arrangements and management overlaps are internal records, not part of what we say on this subject.
Section 2 · Where we came from
2011, and one refusal.
CCI was established in 2011 — because a trading company's procurement team asked our QC to issue a passing report. We refused, and became independent. We answer to inspection results only.
It is not a founding myth, and it is not a compliment to ourselves. It is the specific event that decided what this company is for, and it is the reason the sentence above about the three facts matters more here than it would elsewhere.
What this means in practice
When a check result is inconvenient to the party paying for the goods, we record it anyway. That is the entire product.
Section 3 · The three mechanisms
We do not ask you to trust a person's character. We ask you to check a process that leaves records.
01
Inspectors rotate
Our inspectors move between sites on a regular schedule. Across a year of shipments, different people will usually be looking at different stages.
02
Only the principal receives the report
The party buying from the factory does not receive our reports. Only the principal who commissioned the inspection does. This is not discretion — it is a rule. Precisely because the buying side cannot see the report, we can write facts that are inconvenient to it.
03
Re-inspection goes to a different inspector
A second look is never given to the person who took the first. No one with a financial or family interest in a consignment — as a shareholder, director, employee or creditor of the supplier or of the client, or a close relative of someone who is — is assigned to attend it.
Section 4 · Where our responsibility ends
When a problem is found.
We discuss it with the principal. We carry out remediation. And if it cannot be fixed, the principal decides whether to ship. We do not make that call.
This is a division of labour, not a disclaimer. The moment an inspection body decides the outcome, its report stops being usable by a bank or a destination authority.
Read this before you commission us
Independence is claimed by nearly everyone in this industry. The only useful thing this page can do is state the specific facts and mechanisms the claim rests on, so that you can test them against what you already know.
Boundaries — stated plainly
What we do not do.
An inspector who also decides the outcome is not independent. These five follow from that one sentence.
- We do not issue a pass/fail conclusion on the whole lot.
- We do not guarantee customs clearance, or approval by the destination country's authorities.
- We do not negotiate prices, sign contracts on your behalf, handle payment or settlement, or clear customs for you.
- We do not decide whether you ship. We give you the facts; you decide.
- We do not certify a factory's HACCP, BRCGS, IFS, ISO or any other certification status, and we do not restate an official certificate as a CCI finding.
Facts and measurements only. No conformity conclusion on the whole lot.
If you want to test these claims, start here.
Send us a shipment you have already inspected, and compare our record against what you found.