Funnily enough, the image the Guardian have used is not the CE marking, it's the so-called China Export mark that means to gull buyers into thinking the product is CE assessed.
Tho finding CE marking on goods that shouldn’t have them (typically from china bought via ebay/ali/etc) is not particularly hard.
But yes, even my company has had mishaps with the CE logo on our products, and in that case it’s not because we are trying to be misleading. The primary reason in our case was that the laser printer software is shite and sometimes just changes things for “fun”.
I’m having trouble finding a government source on this, as it would be useful for us to know if we need the UKCA mark or not after all on our export products.
But I’m frankly not surprised, there’s so many regulatory things regarding the UK that’s just in limbo, making it really annoying for us to actually follow the rules. Our company has more than once considered just pulling out of that market.
The good news is that now we have to follow CE requirements on product safety with precisely zero say on the rules because we're out of the EU. Great job Brexiters.
I'm suprised too! The standards were pretty similar, so I don't think it was a major ordeal for manufacturers, other than an extra round of certifications to submit, and some label redesigns.
Kinda strange though, I'll be able to identify all the tools I bought between 2020 and whenever the labels phase out.
Like having a spanner with "Made in the USSR" on it.