TOPOS Foundation acts as Distributing Laboratory for the Cepi Comparative Testing Service.

The Cepi Comparative Testing Service is a proficiency scheme organized two times per year by a group of renown European paper research institutes, the Coordinating Laboratories.

Each of these Laboratories is responsible for a number of tests, prepares the samples, organizes a pretest round, processes the results and prepares the reports.

Locally, the samples are distributed by national Distributing Laboratories. These institutes communicate directly with their customers and sell the samples, distribute the samples two times per year, collect the results and report these to the Coordinating Labs. They also distribute the reports from the CL’s back to the customers, often in the local language.

To be able to provide a reliable reference value with the samples, use is made of the services of Qualified Laboratories. These, mostly accredited, laboratories receive, prior to the shipment to the customers, sets of the samples to test. The results from these laboratories are processed again by the Coordinating Labs to generate reference values, including warning and action limits which are distributed to the clients together with the samples.