BIS Certification for Wrought Copper Tubes for Refrigeration & Air-Conditioning

Refrigeration-grade copper tube - ACR tube in the trade - lives a different life from any other copper tube. It carries refrigerant, not water: a closed circuit where the tube's inner surface directly contacts the refrigerant and compressor oil for the equipment's entire life. That is why internal cleanliness is this product's defining requirement - residues left inside the tube from manufacturing circulate with the refrigerant, clog expansion devices and kill compressors. IS 10773:1995 exists to guarantee, among everything else, that the inside of the tube is as engineered as the outside.

Add to that the joint-making reality of the HVAC trade - tube ends are flared and expanded on site, brazed at high temperature, and pressure-cycled through every start-stop of the system - and you get a product whose ductility, wall integrity and cleanliness all carry equal weight. The 2024 Copper Products QCO makes certification of this tube compulsory, and India's booming air-conditioning market makes it commercially unavoidable.

Knowing exactly where your product sits within the standard saves time and money at the testing stage. The practical scope:

The circulatory system of India's fastest-growing appliance market:

The regime combines the standard tube tests with the requirements unique to refrigerant duty:

The Copper Products QCO is stricter on exemptions than many other quality control orders. There is essentially one exemption: goods manufactured domestically purely for export. There is no exemption for goods imported as a component of a finished product, and no small-unit turnover exemption - micro and small enterprises were simply given later compliance dates (19 April 2025 and 19 January 2025 respectively), and those dates have now passed. In other words, today the order applies with full force to every manufacturer, of every size, selling into India.

BIS expects documentation in three broad groups. Getting the format right is the single biggest cause of delay for first-time applicants, which is exactly the part we take off your plate:

• Administrative: company registration, factory licence, trademark proof, and - for foreign makers - the Authorized Indian Representative appointment.
• Technical: product drawings and specification, raw-material details, machinery list, in-house test equipment list, and the recognised-lab test report.
• Quality control: the quality manual, competent QC personnel details, and the process and quality-control flow for the product.

The route depends on where your factory is. Indian manufacturers follow the domestic Scheme-I process - sample testing, documentation and a factory assessment before the licence is granted (official standard timeframe is about 30 days for a fully-prepared file; realistically plan for a few weeks to a few months). The step-by-step is on our BIS Certification for Indian Manufacturers page. Manufacturers outside India go through FMCS with an Authorized Indian Representative and typically an overseas factory audit (standard timeframe about 180 days) - see our FMCS guide.

Once the licence is granted, BIS issues a unique licence number (the CM/L number). The ISI Mark together with that CM/L number must be applied to the product and its packaging in the manner the standard prescribes - it is what lets a buyer, an inspector or a tender authority verify the certificate is genuine. Selling a notified copper product that carries no mark, or a mark without a valid licence behind it, is treated as non-compliance.

The Bureau of Indian Standards is the certifying and enforcing authority for this product, and non-compliance is dealt with under the BIS Act, 2016:

• Seizure of stock from the factory, warehouse or distribution chain.
• Customs detention of imported consignments that arrive without a valid licence and marking.
• Fines and imprisonment as provided under the BIS Act, 2016, for manufacturing, importing or selling without certification.
• Loss of tenders and contracts, since government, PSU and serious private buyers require the ISI Mark as a precondition.

Copper products span nine notified items - wire rods, rods and bars, strip, wires and four distinct tube categories - each under its own Indian Standard with its own test regime. We work across the entire Copper Products QCO as specialists, prepare every document to exact BIS format, and coordinate lab testing and the factory assessment so your file keeps moving - whether your plant is in India or overseas.