How to Verify a Chinese PCB Factory
A large share of the "PCB manufacturers" you will email this week are trading companies. Some of them buy the boards they resell from factories like ours. Here is the checklist we would use if we were in your chair — every step works on any supplier, including us.
Why this matters
There is nothing illegal about trading companies — many provide real service. But every layer between you and the production line adds margin to your unit price and distance between you and the people who actually control quality and lead time.
The problem is that brokers rarely introduce themselves as brokers. On their websites, everyone is a "manufacturer". The good news: a real factory can prove itself in minutes, and a trading company cannot. You just need to know what to ask for.
The 6-point verification checklist
1. Ask for the factory address — then look at it
A production plant sits in an industrial park with serious floor space, not in an office tower. Check the address on a map. Ask which entity owns the plant and how it relates to the company quoting you. A factory answers in one sentence; a broker gets vague.
2. Ask for the equipment list
Every real factory maintains an equipment ledger — drilling machines, plating lines, testers, with counts. A broker cannot produce one for "their" plant, or sends you something generic. Ours is published openly on this site, machine by machine.
3. Ask for certificates — the originals
ISO 9001, IATF 16949 and UL certificates name the certified legal entity and site. Ask for scanned originals and check that the entity matches the company quoting you. A broker's certificates are either someone else's or "under renewal".
4. Ask an engineering question
Send your stack-up and ask something specific: minimum solder-mask bridge? Aspect ratio limit? Impedance tolerance? A factory's reply comes from a process engineer and reads like one. A broker forwards your question to their real supplier — you'll feel the extra day and the secondhand answer.
5. Ask for test data with shipment
Impedance curves, microsections, RoHS reports — a factory generates these in its own lab and can attach them to your shipment. Ask whether that data comes from an in-house lab or a third party, and whether you can have it routinely.
6. Run the price test
Send the same RFQ to the supplier you suspect is a broker and to a factory, and compare. A reseller's quote must cover the factory price plus their margin — at equal specs and quality systems, the source is structurally lower. One email tells you more than any website copy.
Red flags that usually mean "trading company"
- No factory address anywhere on the site, or only an office-tower address
- Cannot name their equipment or quote machine counts
- Certificates issued to a different company name than the one quoting you
- Every technical question takes a day and comes back vague
- Stock photos where factory photos should be
- Refuses a video look at the production floor
Now run that checklist on us
Our factory address is published (Suichuan Industrial Park, Ji'an, Jiangxi — plus a sales office in Dongguan). The full equipment ledger, machine by machine, is on the Capabilities page. Our UL file number is E336650 — search it in UL Product iQ right now — and our IATF 16949 certificate CN048380 (Bureau Veritas, valid to 2027) is downloadable on the Certifications page, together with the CQC product certificates. Engineering questions are answered by process engineers as part of the free DFM review, and impedance, microsection and RoHS data can travel with your shipment.
And the price test is exactly what we invite you to do: a number of Chinese trading companies source the boards they resell from our factory. Send us the RFQ your current supplier already quoted, and compare the two numbers yourself.
See the equipment ledger →See certificates & numbers →
Put Us Through the Checklist
Send your Gerber files and requirements — factory-direct quote, free DFM review, and any verification material you want to see, within 24 hours.
Your files are used for quotation and production only.