Accreditation is the way we recognise, determine and promote the ability of organisations to perform specific types of technical and scientific activities. These activities can include measurement, testing, calibration and inspection and accreditation recognises an organisation’s compliance with relevant national and international standards. 

Through successful NATA accreditation, organisations can be trusted, technical results counted on and inspected products and services safe and reliable for public use. 

NATA accredited organisations enjoy the security of knowing they have a proven, independently assessed benchmark for performance. 

As accreditation is often a requirement for international trade in goods and services, or government tendering opportunities, it also delivers an important point of difference in a competitive environment. 

For almost every element of our lives, we need to have confidence in the products and services we use every day.  

NATA accreditation provides that confidence. It ensures accredited organisations can be trusted to deliver on performance and protection. 

Being a NATA accredited facility builds credibility in an organisation’s products and services. 

Overall, accreditation creates confidence by providing a structured and reliable framework for the quality of results ensuring their traceability, comparability and validity. 

Through the accreditation process organisations can demonstrate: 

• The efficiency and validity of their processes 
• The accuracy of their measurements 
• Assurance around innovation 
• Technical competence 
• Impartiality 
• Confidence to customers 
• Commercial advantages 
• International acceptance of results  

NATA accreditation provides a benchmark for organisations, allowing them to determine whether they are performing their work correctly, competently and to appropriate standards. Through the accreditation process, issues and gaps in processes or capabilities can be identified creating the opportunity to improve organisational efficiency and outputs. 

Consumers rely on products and services being safe to use. Accreditation helps recognise credible and competent organisations that perform the testing and inspection activities for those products and services. This ultimately gives consumers the assurance they need to make safe, healthy and reliable choices. 

Accreditation is also a business risk management tool. Through accreditation, businesses reduce the possibility of product failure, help control manufacturing costs and demonstrate due diligence in the event of a legal challenge. 

Accreditation provides product and service differentiation. It creates a benchmark which unaccredited competitors may struggle to meet and cannot independently demonstrate. 

Internationally, NATA accredited laboratories also receive recognition, allowing their reports and scientific data to be accepted in overseas markets creating substantial market opportunities. 

This international recognition also helps to reduce costs for manufacturers and exporters by reducing or eliminating the need for retesting in another country. 

NATA accreditation forms a critical element of international trade agreements between Australia and other nations. As Australia’s premier accreditation body, NATA plays a significant part in global cooperatives and partnerships with similar organisations around the world. 

NATA is a founding and active member of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) and the Asia Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (APAC). It is also a signatory to the ILAC and APAC Mutual Recognition Arrangements (MRAs) which facilitates acceptance of Australian test, inspection and calibration data in overseas economies and of Australian goods in foreign markets. 

Many government departments specify accredited organisations when tendering for services. Accreditation is also being requested by an increasing number of industry bodies and private sector organisations. 

In these cases, accreditation provides a major competitive advantage.