GHAD and FASEH

GHAD is SFDA’s unified electronic system for registering food products, registering manufacturing facilities and warehouses, and handling licensing and approvals. It replaced the FRCS platform. SFDA launched the third and final phase of food services on GHAD on 25 May 2025, completing the transition to digital operation.

Registration is mandatory before import. Products are listed under the Saudi importer’s account, and no food product enters the market unless it is registered there. Local manufacturing licences are handled through the equivalent GHAD services.

What it is for

Registering products, facilities and warehouses; licensing; approvals

Replaced

FRCS

Fully live for food

Phase 3 launched 25 May 2025

FASEH is the electronic clearance system. Importers submit clearance requests through it for food, drug products, medical devices, cosmetics and imported fodder, and certification bodies use it to inspect products and issue consignment conformity certificates.

During 2025 SFDA moved food Certificates of Conformity onto FASEH exclusively. If your process still assumes a CoC issued outside FASEH, that assumption is out of date.

What it is for

Shipment clearance requests and consignment conformity certificates

Covers

Food, drug products, medical devices, cosmetics, imported fodder

Portal

faseh.sfda.gov.sa

FASAH is the national customs and logistics platform. FASEH is SFDA’s clearance system. They are spelled almost identically, they appear in the same sentence constantly, and they belong to different authorities doing different jobs.

In practice a consignment touches both: SFDA clearance runs through FASEH, and the customs release runs on the FASAH side. Knowing which one a colleague means when they say "it is stuck in the system" is the difference between chasing the right queue and the wrong one.

If someone tells you the shipment is held in the system, the first question is which system.

Registration on GHAD is about identity and permission: what the product is, who makes it, where. It generally does not turn on a test result.

Clearance on FASEH is where results appear, because a Certificate of Conformity is issued against the product’s specification and the requirements applying to it. Where those requirements name a limit — a contaminant, a microbiological criterion, a compositional value — a result against a published method is what supports the certificate.