Tanzania’s PVoC Inspection-Zone Changes, Explained

If you were exporting to Tanzania in early 2025 and relying on a compliance guide written even a year earlier, you may have sent your shipment to the wrong inspection company. On 1 March 2025, Tanzania’s Bureau of Standards reassigned its Pre-Shipment Verification of Conformity (PVoC) inspection-zone contracts — and the changes were significant enough that they’re still tripping people up.

What actually changed

Three things happened at once: Bureau Veritas’s PVoC contract with TBS ended. SGS lost its authorization to certify shipments originating in the United States. Intertek became the sole authorized inspector for US-origin goods bound for Tanzania. If your compliance documentation, your freight forwarder’s playbook, or a blog post you found still names Bureau Veritas as an option, or SGS as your US-origin inspector, it’s describing a system that stopped applying in March 2025.

Why this is an import-side issue, not an export one — but still matters here

To be precise about scope: PVoC is a pre-shipment inspection regime for goods being imported into Tanzania, not a requirement on Tanzanian exports. We cover it on Export.tz anyway, for two reasons. First, many Tanzanian trading companies are on both sides of the ledger — importing inputs or equipment while also exporting finished or raw goods — and get this confused. Second, “which inspection company covers your shipment” is exactly the kind of practical, dated question that official portals tend to document once and then leave stale, which is precisely the gap we found when researching this.

The practical takeaway

If you’re importing into Tanzania and your goods originate in the United States: your PVoC inspection now has to go through Intertek, not SGS. If you’re working with a compliance partner or customs broker who hasn’t updated their guidance since before March 2025, that’s worth raising directly — using the wrong inspector isn’t a paperwork inconvenience, it can hold a shipment at origin.