General Electric Breakers

Forged products pose health hazards

The use of counterfeit circuit breakers in low-cost housing poses significant safety hazards, says CBI Electric low voltage marketing executive Louis Blom .

This follows the company’s discovery, in April, that its locally manufactured circuit breakers are being imitated by an unknown manufacturer in Asia, and sold to local whole-salers as original CBI products.

Blom tells Engineering News that CBI became aware of the imitation products after receiving a complaint from a customer about a faulty circuit breaker.

“Initially, we could not tell that the device was counterfeit. Externally, it was a perfect imitation with our manufacturing information stipulated on the side of the casing. However, on closer inspection, we found that it had inferior components, which indicated that it was a cheap imitation of our product,” he says.

Blom adds that a possible suspect has been identified and that CBI is taking legal action.

As the only circuit breaker manufacturer in South Africa, CBI’s products undergo quality testing at its Elandsfontein site and adhere to International Electrotechnical Commission 90647-2 and SANS 556-1 standards.

CBI conducted testing of counterfeit 10A circuit breakers it obtained through retailers and found that these present an electrical hazard.

Further, the materials used in the counterfeit devices were found to lack many of the intrinsic safety parameters, such as flame retardant additives, exacerbating the hazard. Blom says this could lead to the electrical wiring catching fire and the end-user’s premises burning down.

He adds that it is obvious that the counterfeit products are not tested by the National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications, which puts the end-user, who unknowingly buys the product, at risk.

Cheap Choice Counterfeit imported circuit breakers are often cheaper than the original products, offering a solution to housing developers seeking to limit costs in their housing projects, states Blom.

He adds that other cheaper imports from the Far East also pose a quality challenge as some of these appear to be only tested once by the regulator before entering the local market. Blom says the poor quality of circuit breaker installations in both low-cost housing and general applications is also cause for concern.

“In many cases, inexperi-enced electricians install equip-ment, which results in poor installations. And the general inexperience of artisans adds to the problem. Such persons do self-policing and do not notice if the installation is faulty,” he notes.

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