Is that lab report real?
By Mohamad Sinno, Charcoal Expert · published . Not reviewed by the Head of QC — the reviewer byline on our older quality pages carries the date those pages were read, and this one has not been read yet.
Ask AI for an importer brief:
A certificate of analysis is easy to produce and hard to check, which is why it is the document most often faked in this trade. The checks below take a few minutes each. We have run them against our own three reports on this page, including the one where we published a reference that matched nothing — so you can see what the check catches when it works.
The short answer: four routes, none through the seller
Every route below has one property in common — it does not pass through the party who gave you the document. That is the whole idea. A laboratory publishes its own address and telephone number; an accreditation body publishes its own register; a batch code is printed on a carton in your own warehouse. None of those can be edited by whoever emailed you a PDF.
- Read the number and the dates first. A genuine report carries a report number and, usually, three dates — received, tested, issued. Write them down before you talk to anyone.
- Find the laboratory yourself. Use the contacts on the laboratory's own letterhead or in the accreditation register. Not the link in the email, not the QR code on the PDF, not the number in the footer of the document you are checking.
- Look up the accreditation and read its scope. Accreditation is granted for named tests. A laboratory can be genuinely accredited and still not be accredited for the test on your certificate.
- Ask the laboratory to confirm. Report number, issue date, does this exist and does it match. One source in this field describes that step as taking about five minutes (ayahlabs.com, laboratory, 25 January 2026).
- Tie the paper to the goods. Match the batch identifier on the certificate to the code printed on the cartons in front of you. A real report for another batch is not evidence about your shipment.
Now run it on us
We publish three lab reports from one named laboratory. Here is what a verifier needs from each of them. Every field below is transcribed from the scans we hold, not retyped from a summary.
| Report | Date | Moisture | Ash | Volatile matter | Fixed carbon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beckjorindo COA 000957 | 17 June 2026 | 3.06% | 1.58% | 18.33% | 77.03% |
| Beckjorindo COA 000964 | 24–25 June 2026 | 2.63% | 1.34% | 17.82% | 78.21% |
| Beckjorindo COA 001061 | 23 July 2026 | 1.35% | 1.20% | 16.61% | 80.84% |
The laboratory, its accreditation and how to reach it without us. All three certificates are issued by PT Beckjorindo Paryaweksana Laboratory, Jl. Rawa Bengkel No. 8, Bandar Lampung, and each states its accreditation by KAN — Indonesia's national accreditation committee — under certificate number LP-090-IDN. The laboratory's contact details are printed on its own letterhead on every certificate, which is the route to use: ours are the same details you would find yourself, and you should confirm them yourself anyway.
To check the accreditation, use KAN's own register. From kan.or.id, follow Direktori LPK → Terakreditasi → Laboratorium → Laboratorium Penguji, which opens the register's "LP Active" report. Search it for LP-090-IDN. Each row gives the accreditation number, the laboratory's name, its address, the scope it is accredited for, and the expiry date of the accreditation — the scope and the expiry being the two fields worth reading rather than glancing at.
What that search returned when our own owner ran it, on . Searching the register for "Beckjorindo" returns two rows. LP-090-IDN — the Bandar Lampung laboratory named above, at Jl. Rawa Bengkel No. 8 — with its scope summarised as "Biji kopi, lada hitam, wood charcoal, activated carbon" and valid until 27 June 2027. LP-1682-IDN — the same company's Semarang branch, at Jl. Madukoro Perum Semarang Indah DXVIII No. 20 — with its scope summarised as "Biji kopi, arang tempurung kelapa" and valid until 23 August 2027. Our three certificates were issued by the Bandar Lampung laboratory, under LP-090-IDN. So the row that carries our certificates is the row whose scope summary does not name coconut shell charcoal, and the row that does name it belongs to a branch that did not issue them. The register's full scope document sits behind a login and we have not read it, so we do not know whether the summary line is the whole of the scope or a shortened form of it — and we are not going to guess in either direction. The question to put to the laboratory, in writing, is which scope entry covers ASTM D1762-84 and IK.BPL.7.4 for charcoal briquettes. That is the check we would apply to any supplier's certificate, and it does not stop applying because the certificate is ours.
Read that as a dated reading, not as a clearance. The lookup above was performed by hand, by this company's owner, on the date given — not by this website, and not by anyone independent of us. It is published because it is checkable: the register is public, the search takes a minute, and if your result differs from ours then ours is the one that is wrong. Nothing here says the accreditation covers our tests and nothing here says it does not.
The failure this check catches — ours
In September 2026 this site withdrew a laboratory reference it had been publishing. A report was attributed to a second laboratory, with a fixed-carbon figure quoted on a dry basis, and neither matched any document the company holds. It was caught by the check on this page: somebody asked which held scan the number came from, and there was not one. The reference and the figure were removed, the correction is written up rather than buried, and what remains is the three certificates in the table above.
The reason to put that here rather than somewhere quieter is that it is the honest form of the claim this page makes. A supplier telling you to verify certificates should be able to show you the time verification went against them. The full account is on our certifications page.
Forgery patterns, without naming anyone
These are the shapes the problem takes. They are described as patterns because naming a producer on the strength of a pattern is how a page like this becomes the thing it warns about. Each is attributed to the source that documented it.
- Results retyped onto the seller's letterhead. A summary of evidence you have not seen. Ask for the laboratory's own report (heavymetaltested.com, testing service, 23 July 2026).
- The self-contained verification loop. The seller supplies the PDF, the QR code, the verification link and the site that says it is genuine. One source puts it exactly: you have not verified four things, you have trusted one source four times (vanguardlaboratory.com, laboratory, undated).
- A real accreditation number on a document the laboratory never issued. Accreditation asks whether a laboratory is competent; authentication asks whether this report is theirs. A genuine number can be copied (vanguardlaboratory.com).
- A reused certificate from an earlier lot. Genuine document, wrong goods — which is why the batch match matters more than the letterhead (ayahlabs.com, 25 January 2026).
- Results that are too consistent. Real analysis moves a little between batches. Identical figures across lots are a reason to ask what was actually tested (ayahlabs.com).
Two of those three sources work in supplements and peptides rather than charcoal. The reasoning transfers because the document does; the markets do not, and neither do their thresholds.
What a supplier should volunteer
You can tell a good deal from what arrives without being asked for. The list below is what we send, and it is a reasonable bar to hold anyone to.
- The certificate as issued, with its own report number and dates — not a specification sheet with the numbers copied across. The difference between those two documents is the subject of a separate page.
- The method beside each value. On our reports moisture and volatile matter are run to ASTM D1762-84 (reapproved 2021) and ash and fixed carbon to the laboratory's own internal instruction. That split is stated because it is what the certificates say, and a supplier who lets you assume everything is ASTM is telling you something.
- A straight answer about basis. None of our three certificates states whether its figures are as-received or dry. We say so rather than picking the flattering reading. Two numbers on different bases are not comparable, and the difference is not small.
- The validity window. Each of ours states that it is valid for 90 days from issue. A certificate old enough to have expired is not a scandal; presenting it as current is.
- A batch code that leads somewhere. Ours is printed on every carton, and it opens the batch file — see the audit protocol.
Some buyers re-test independently at laboratories of their own choosing and have reported results consistent with these certificates. We hold no copies of those reports and do not name those laboratories, so that is their account rather than our evidence — which is the correct weight to give it.
Common questions
- Can I contact the laboratory directly to check a certificate?
- Yes, and you should. Give the report number and the issue date and ask whether that report exists and matches what you were sent. The only rule is where you get the contact details from: use the laboratory’s own letterhead or the accreditation register, never a link, QR code or phone number printed on the document you are checking.
- What does an accreditation number actually prove?
- That the laboratory was assessed as competent for a named scope of tests, on a date, with an expiry. It does not prove that your particular certificate is genuine, and it does not automatically cover every test the laboratory performs — accreditation is granted for named methods, so reading the scope matters more than seeing the number.
- Our laboratory is accredited under LP-090-IDN. Does its scope cover coconut shell charcoal?
- We do not know, and we are not going to guess. KAN’s public register summarises that laboratory’s scope as "Biji kopi, lada hitam, wood charcoal, activated carbon", which does not name coconut shell charcoal; the full scope document sits behind a login and we have not read it. The question to put to the laboratory in writing is which scope entry covers ASTM D1762-84 and IK.BPL.7.4 for charcoal briquettes.
- A supplier sent a certificate with no batch or lot number. Is that a problem?
- It is the most common failure and it is fatal to the document’s purpose. A certificate describes the sample it was drawn from. With nothing tying that sample to the goods in your warehouse, a genuine report from a real laboratory still proves nothing about your shipment.
- Have you ever published a laboratory reference that was wrong?
- Yes. In September 2026 we withdrew a report credited to a second laboratory, along with a fixed-carbon figure quoted on a dry basis, because neither matched any document the company holds. It was caught by the check on this page — somebody asked which held scan the number came from, and there was not one. The correction is written up on our certifications page rather than buried.
Ask for the reports
We will send the certificates with their numbers and dates intact so you can run every check above — WhatsApp +62 821 3924 038 or export@coconutcharcoal.org. If you would rather start from the document itself, how to read a charcoal COA walks the fields in order, and what a certificate of analysis proves sets out what it does and does not cover.