Summary of the Canadian EPA issue

Recently, most of the people contacting me have been clients from Canada.
It seems that YouTube has been pushing my videos mainly to Canadian viewers.

And today, it's still the same issue: EPA.
Canada's ECCC largely refers to EPA standards, so I think this topic really needs to be clarified again.

About a month ago, Clayton came to China looking for partners.
He visited many markets. Besides evaluating machine quality and pricing, his main concern was EPA compliance.
I couldn't give him a clear answer, so he probably decided to walk away from me.

That's a bit unfortunate, but to be honest, I was already thinking about stepping away from sales and focusing purely on equipment inspection.

Recently, Guillaume is likely to place an order through Sara.
I'm a little worried about the EPA issue, so I asked Sara again.
She told me that mini excavators under 8 tons usually don't have EPA problems in Canada.

Most of my previous customers were in the United States, not Canada.
So I'm not fully familiar with Canadian EPA rules, and I can't give a 100 percent guaranteed answer.
However, Amy and Sara ship to Canada frequently, so they are more experienced with that market than I am.

Amy said this:
Kubota and Caterpillar both have assembly lines in China. As long as the machines meet Chinese environmental standards, they can be sold domestically.
Because of that, most of these machines do not come with EPA labels.
Machines that do have EPA labels are usually built specifically for the North American market, and they are very rare in China.

Sara said this:
For mini excavators under 8 tons, selling them into Canada generally does not cause EPA issues.

Clayton said this:
He checked with customs, and as long as the EPA label is not fake, customs will not detain the equipment.

Putting all of this together, the situation becomes very clear.

Machines that get held by Canadian customs are almost always detained because the EPA information is not genuine.

In China, the vast majority of machines do not come with EPA labels.
To export to North America, some sellers buy EPA labels from the market and attach them to China-built machines.
This has become a complete underground industry chain.
The public price for a full set of EPA labels is usually between 1200 and 2000 yuan.

So, if you are in Canada and want to buy used equipment from China, you cannot simply pick any machine you like.
You must ask the seller to find machines that originally came with EPA labels.

From another perspective, if a machine already has an EPA label, even if it's old, there's a high chance it's an original export model.
EPA is a symbol of identity.
With an EPA label, you're old money.
It means the machine was born in the U.S., left, and then came back.
Without EPA, it means the machine was born in China and is trying to immigrate.

Over the past six months, I haven't received any cases of Canadian customers having their machines detained by customs.
I thought the situation was improving.
But now I realize it's probably because the situation has become so serious that very few people even dare to ship machines to Canada anymore.

I'll continue to follow Guillaume's transaction.
Whether his machine clears Canadian customs smoothly or not, I'll keep everyone updated.

Technically speaking, EPA standards and China emission standards do have similarities, and conversions are possible on an engineering level.
Unfortunately, the U.S. and Canada do not recognize any Chinese emission standards.
They only recognize EPA labels.

That's the reality.

So if you want to import used equipment from China to North America on a large scale, you must have very strong regulatory and public-relations capability.
Otherwise, things can get very difficult.

And finally,
I hope for world peace.

I'm Mike Phua. Thanks for watching.

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