China’s New Regulations for Lithium Battery Shipping

On October 30, 2019, the Civil Aviation Administration of China has issued new regulations regarding the latest UN38.3 requirements for shipping lithium batteries from any Chinese air/sea ports.
This comes effective on January 1, 2020.

1. Starting from January 1, 2020, Lithium cell or batteries shipped by air or sea from any Chinese ports must provide a Lithium battery Test Summary. This new requirement applies to lithium batteries and cells and products containing lithium batteries.

2. Any lithium batteries or products containing lithium batteries shipped from a Chinese airport or sea port must have a separate Safe Transportation Certificate. It is called “Identification and Classification Report for Air / Sea Transport of Goods”. In addition, a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) certificate is also required for shipping.

3. Starting from January 1, 2020, the test lab for UN38.3 testing has to be a China CNAS accredited lab. All UN38.3 test reports for lithium batteries must have the CNAS stamp on it before the lab can issue air/sea Safe Transportation Certificate.

4. Starting from January 1, 2020, all UN38.3 test report has to be tested to the sixth edition, revision 1 of the standard. Previous test reports need to do additional testing and then upgrade to the latest version.

5. The air / sea Safe Transportation certificates is valid up to December 31 of that year. It will automatically expire after December 31 of each year. These certificates have to be renewed every year to be valid for the next year. For the renewal there is no need to retest only paperwork.

Note: the above requirements only apply to the goods shipping from a Chinese air/sea port.