SABER, SALEEM and SFDA

SALEEM is the Saudi product safety programme run under SASO, the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization. SABER is the electronic platform through which it operates: importers register products and obtain certificates of conformity for regulated goods before they reach the border. It became the mandatory route for regulated imports in 2018.

SABER covers a wide span of manufactured and consumer goods against Saudi technical regulations. It is the default answer for a great many products — which is exactly why it gets applied to products it does not cover.

The Saudi Food and Drug Authority regulates food, drugs and medical devices, and sets the mandatory specifications for them, whether imported or made locally. Food products are handled through SFDA’s own systems — registration on GHAD, clearance on FASEH — rather than through the SASO route.

Several other categories also sit outside the SALEEM programme and with SFDA instead, including cosmetics, tobacco, and pesticides and insecticides. The practical rule is that SFDA-regulated categories follow SFDA’s process, not SABER’s.

If it is food, the question is not "which SABER certificate" — it is whether the product and the facility are registered on GHAD.

A team that starts in the wrong system does not usually find out quickly. They find out when a consignment is already in transit, and the fix — registering a product, and often a facility, in the correct system — is not a same-day activity.

The confusion is understandable. Both regimes issue something called a certificate of conformity, both require pre-registration, and both are described by service providers in near-identical marketing language. The distinction is the regulator, not the paperwork.

Food, drugs, medical devices

SFDA — GHAD and FASEH

Cosmetics, tobacco, pesticides

SFDA

General regulated goods

SASO — SALEEM programme via SABER

A laboratory result supports a conformity claim against a named limit or specification. It does not decide which regulatory regime applies to your product, and any laboratory that tells you otherwise is answering a question it has not been asked.

What we can do is test against the specification or the Gulf standard you name, report the result with the method and the limit applied, and give you a document that is legible to whichever authority ends up reading it.