What changed at SSA in June, and what the company says prompted it

SSA has identified the facility that synthesises the material it sells, and has separated, in writing, the catalogue lines it makes from those it finishes from sourced material. The Journal first put the question in writing 7 quarters ago; the answer arrived this quarter with a site name, a line reference and an offer to confirm either against a batch number.

The Journal’s written requests are dated across 7 quarters and were sent to the address the company publishes for commercial enquiries. All were answered inside a fortnight. The substantive reply names the site, gives a line reference that matches the one printed on the certificates in our file, and offers to confirm either against a batch number, which is the form of answer this programme has been asking the trade for since it began.

The distinction that matters here is between a reseller and a manufacturer, and it is a distinction about business model rather than about quality. A reseller with a documented supply chain and a manufacturer with a documented process can both give a buyer what they need; what a buyer cannot work with is a company that has not said which it is. The twenty in the dossier programme have all now said.

"Printing the threshold costs them nothing and it is the single most useful line you can add," said Lorcan Feeney, analytical services director at an independent laboratory. "It converts a number you have to trust into a number you can check."

The change has been recorded in SSA’s dossier, which is reviewed quarterly. Readers holding certificates from this supplier are invited to send them to the standards desk; we compare document sets across time and publish what changes.