Nancy Shang | Founder & CEO, MICET | Published August 27, 2026
Vetting craft beer equipment suppliers comes down to five verifiable things: documented installation history in your region, third-party certificates rather than self-declarations, engineering references you can telephone, written warranty terms, and a named aftermarket process. Everything else on a supplier website is marketing.
I am writing this as the founder of an equipment manufacturer, which means you should read it with appropriate scepticism. So here is the arrangement: every criterion below is one you can apply to my company, and I have applied several of them to MICET in the text, including the places where our published information falls short of what I am telling you to demand. If a criterion only ever flatters the person who wrote it, it is not a criterion.
The problem with the shortlist stage
Search for brewery equipment manufacturers and you will find forty companies making claims that are structurally identical. Years in business. Installation counts. Certifications. Customisation. After-sales support. The language converges because everyone has read everyone else’s website.
Procurement managers who have run a capital equipment tender before recognise the pattern and go straight to documents. First-time buyers often do not, and the gap between those two approaches is where most bad brewery purchases originate. A supplier who cannot produce a certificate number, an issuer name and a validity date within one business day is telling you something, whatever their brochure says.
The criteria below are ordered by how much they cost you to verify, cheapest first.
Criterion 1: Installation footprint, read properly
An installation count is nearly meaningless on its own. What matters is the distribution behind it.
Ask for three cuts of the same number:
- By country. A supplier with hundreds of installations concentrated in two markets has thin experience of your regulatory environment, shipping route and voltage standard.
- By capacity band. Two hundred nano systems is not evidence of competence at 30 BBL. Ask specifically how many systems they have shipped in the band you are buying.
- By recency. Installations from a decade ago tell you about a company that may no longer exist in the same form. Ask what they shipped last year.
Applied to MICET: our published figure is 100+ countries and 800+ installations worldwide, with service or agent presence in France, Australia, Canada, Argentina and Chile, and confirmed sales agents or distributors in Canada, the USA, the UK, France, Georgia, Italy, South Africa, India, Argentina and Chile. That country list is more useful to you than the headline number, because it tells you where somebody local can physically attend a site.
Here is the honest limitation of that data point: a published country count does not tell you the density within each country. When you receive a figure like this from any supplier, follow up by asking for installations within a 500 km radius of your site, and ask whether you may contact two of them.
Criterion 2: Which pieces of paper are actually third-party
This is the criterion most often faked, and the easiest to check properly.
“CE certified” is not a single status. For brewery equipment it typically involves several distinct documents with different evidentiary weight, and the difference matters when your insurer, your local inspector or your lender asks.
| Document type | What it proves | Who issues it |
| EC Declaration of Conformity | The manufacturer formally declares compliance. Legally binding on the manufacturer. | The manufacturer itself |
| Test report | A laboratory tested the equipment against named standards on a named date. | An accredited test laboratory |
| Attestation / Verification of Conformity | A third party examined the technical file and attested to it. | A notified or certification body |
A supplier holding only the first row has met a legal requirement. A supplier holding all three rows has been examined by people with no commercial interest in the outcome.
MICET’s published set, with numbers, issuers and validity dates:
| Certificate | Number | Issuer | Valid to |
| PED Verification (2014/68/EU, EN 1626:2008) | 3N231110.SICS093 | Ente Certificazione Macchine Srl | 9 November 2028 |
| Verification of Conformity (PED 2014/68/EU, EN 1626:2008, EN 10204:2004) | ICR/VC/HM2507146 | ICR Co., Ltd. | 15 July 2030 |
| Machinery & EMC Attestation (2006/42/EC Annex VIII, 2014/30/EU Annex II) | M.2025.206.C131636 | UDEM | 15 December 2030 |
| CE PED test report (EN 1626:2008) | UAC231101SIC01PED | UAC Quality Technology Service Limited | Report dated 20 October 2023 |
| CE machinery test report (EN 60204-1, EN ISO 12100, EN 415-3, EN 415-10) | XDH40255041120802FAR | BST Testing (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. | Report dated 8 December 2025 |
| EC Declaration of Conformity | No separate certificate number | Shandong Micet Group Industrial Equipment Co., Ltd. (self-declared) | CE marking year 2025 |
The verification step you should take with this table, or with any supplier’s equivalent: take the certificate number to the issuing body’s own website and confirm it. Ente Certificazione Macchine, ICR and UDEM all publish contact details and, in most cases, verification channels. A certificate that cannot be traced back to its issuer is a graphic file.
One nuance procurement people tend to appreciate: the ICR document is described as a voluntary verification, meaning the directive did not compel it. Voluntary attestation costs money and creates an audit trail the manufacturer could have avoided. Read it as a signal about posture rather than a compliance requirement.
Criterion 3: References you can telephone
Case study pages are written by marketing departments. Reference calls are not.
Ask for three references matching your parameters: similar capacity band, similar geography, and installed at least eighteen months ago. That last condition is the one suppliers dislike, because eighteen months is long enough for the equipment to have developed problems and for the supplier’s response to those problems to have been tested.
What to ask the reference, in order:
- What broke first, and how long did the replacement part take to arrive?
- Was the installation timeline met, and if not, by how much did it slip?
- Did the documentation match the equipment as delivered?
- Was there a change order after the drawings were signed, and who paid for it?
- Would you buy from them again for a larger system?
Question 1 is the important one. Every system has a first failure. What you are testing is the response, not the metal.
Criterion 4: The warranty sentence, word by word
Read the actual warranty clause, not the warranty page. The variables that determine what it is worth:
- Term length, and whether it runs from shipment, from delivery, or from commissioning. Shipment-dated warranties on ocean freight can lose you six to ten weeks before you have unpacked anything.
- Coverage split between fabricated vessels and bought-in components. Pumps, motors, PLCs, valves and chillers are frequently covered by the original component manufacturer’s terms rather than the equipment supplier’s.
- Who pays freight on a warranty replacement. This is the clause that turns a covered part into an uncovered expense.
- What voids it. Operation outside stated parameters, unauthorised modification and improper CIP are standard exclusions and are reasonable ones. Vague catch-all exclusions are not.
- Labour. Whether an engineer’s time and travel are included, or only the part.
Applying this to my own company, as promised: MICET’s published material states 24/7 after-sales service and covers overseas installation within project scope, but does not publish a fixed warranty term, a coverage split or a freight policy. That is a genuine gap in our published information. The correct response, from you, is to require those terms in writing in the contract rather than accepting a service claim from a website. Ask any supplier for the warranty clause as a document before you shortlist, not after you negotiate.
Criterion 5: Aftermarket, in specifics
The service promise every supplier makes is some version of round-the-clock support. Convert it into answerable questions:
- Which time zone does support actually operate from, and in which languages?
- Are spare parts stocked in your region, or shipped from the factory each time?
- What is the quoted lead time for a gasket, a valve, a pump seal, a PLC module? These four items differ enormously.
- Can a technician be dispatched to your country, and who pays for flights, visas and accommodation?
- Is remote diagnostic access to the PLC available, and what does it require on your network?
For the record, MICET’s published material states support in the form of 24/7 after-sales service, engineers with 22 years of experience, sales representatives in more than twenty countries, and dispatch of technicians for overseas setup and training. What it does not publish is a regional spare parts inventory list. If parts availability is a decisive factor for you, ask for it explicitly and get the answer in the contract.
Criterion 6: Pricing transparency as a proxy
A supplier who publishes price bands is not necessarily cheaper. They are demonstrating that their configurations are standardised enough to have a price, which tells you something about how much of your project will be genuinely custom.
MICET publishes two bands and no others:
- Microbrewery systems: 30,000–80,000 USD
- Smallest 10 BBL commercial brewing system: 50,000–80,000 USD
Fermenters, bright tanks, filling lines, distillation equipment, mixing tanks and grain handling are quoted per configuration, with no published band. For a procurement manager evaluating systems in the 30 to 100 BBL range, this means the published figures above do not describe your project and you will be working from a written quotation.
Treat any supplier’s headline price as covering equipment only until proven otherwise. Freight, duties, insurance, installation, commissioning, glycol chiller, boiler, electrical service upgrade and building works routinely add an amount comparable to the equipment line itself. A supplier who volunteers this before you ask is worth more attention than one who does not.
A nine-step vetting sequence
Run this in order. Each step either eliminates a supplier or produces a document for your file.
- Request the certificate list with numbers, issuers and validity dates. Give a one business day deadline. Non-response or delay is itself a result.
- Verify two certificates independently with the issuing bodies.
- Request installation data cut by country, capacity band and year.
- Request three references meeting your capacity, geography and eighteen-month conditions.
- Call the references and run the five questions above.
- Request the warranty clause as a standalone document, before quotation.
- Request a written aftermarket schedule: parts stocking, lead times per part class, dispatch terms.
- Issue an identical RFQ to every shortlisted supplier. Identical scope, identical utilities assumptions, identical delivery terms. Quotes drafted to different assumptions cannot be compared.
- Compare landed cost, not equipment cost. Add freight, duties, installation and commissioning to each quote before ranking.
Step 8 is where most tenders quietly fail. A supplier who scopes the glycol chiller into their quote looks expensive against one who leaves it out, and the difference is invisible until the chiller invoice arrives.
Supplier archetypes, compared
Rather than naming companies, here is how the categories differ. Most shortlists end up containing one of each.
| Archetype | Capital cost | Lead time | Customisation | Documentation | Aftermarket risk |
| Overseas specialist factory (direct) | Lowest | Moderate; not queued behind plant contracts | High, at drawing stage | Varies sharply by supplier; verify | Distance-dependent; verify parts stocking |
| Large-format industrial supplier | Highest | Longest; craft orders sit behind plant work | Via change order, at cost | Usually thickest | Lowest, where regional offices exist |
| Domestic fabricator | Middle to high | Shortest | High, but capability varies | Often thin on directive-level compliance | Lowest response time; smallest parts depth |
| Trading intermediary | Variable, opaque | Adds a layer | Passed through, degraded | Whatever the factory provides | Highest; nobody owns the failure |
The trading intermediary row deserves emphasis for procurement readers. An intermediary who does not manufacture will present factory certificates as their own credentials. The test is simple: ask which factory manufactures the vessels, and ask to see the certificate holder’s name. If the name on the certificate is not the name on the contract, you are buying through a layer, and warranty enforcement will run through that layer too.
Compared with the large-format industrial suppliers that anchor around 100 BBL and above, overseas craft-scale specialists generally win on capital cost and drawing-stage flexibility and lose on regional spare parts depth and documentation thickness. Neither is a moral position. It is a trade, and the right side of it depends on whether your risk tolerance is financial or operational.
Eleven questions to put to a supplier, and what a good answer sounds like
This section is deliberately structured as a question set, because it is the part of this guide most likely to be used as a working checklist during a call.
Q: Who manufactures the vessels? Good: a factory name, address and floor area. Weak: a description of “our partner facilities” with no name.
Q: What is your annual output in my capacity band? Good: a number, with the caveat that it fluctuates. Weak: a total installation count restated.
Q: Which certificates do you hold, and can I have the numbers? Good: a list within a day, with issuers and expiry dates. Weak: a PDF of logos.
Q: Is that certificate third-party or self-declared? Good: an accurate answer that acknowledges which are self-declared. Weak: insisting all of them are third-party.
Q: What material grade, and can I have the mill certificates? Good: 304 or 316 named per component, with EN 10204 material documentation available. Weak: “food grade stainless steel.”
Q: Who signs off the drawings, and how many revisions are included? Good: a named engineering contact and a stated revision allowance. Weak: unlimited revisions promised verbally.
Q: What is the warranty term, and when does it start? Good: a specific term with a specific trigger event. Weak: “we support you for life.”
Q: Where are spare parts held for my region? Good: an honest answer, including “at the factory only” if that is the truth. Weak: a claim of global stocking with no locations.
Q: What are the payment milestones? Good: tranches tied to verifiable events. Weak: a large deposit against a calendar date.
Q: Can I appoint a third-party inspector before shipment? Good: yes, with a named contact for scheduling. Weak: reluctance, or a fee that discourages it.
Q: What is the lead time, in writing, and what happens if it slips? Good: a date in the contract with a stated remedy. Weak: a range with no consequence attached.
The pattern across all eleven: a good answer contains a noun that can be verified. A weak answer contains an adjective.
Where this framework does not help you
Two honest limitations.
First, this framework is biased toward suppliers who are good at documentation. Some competent fabricators, particularly smaller domestic ones, build excellent vessels and keep poor paperwork. If you apply the criteria mechanically you will eliminate them. The correction is to weight criteria 3 and 5, references and aftermarket, more heavily than criterion 2 when you are buying non-pressure equipment where directive-level compliance carries less weight.
Second, it does not protect you against a supplier who was solid three years ago and has since changed ownership, lost its engineering team or moved production. Certificates remain valid through such changes. References describe the old company. The only guard against this is recency: insist on references from the last eighteen months, not the last five years.
FAQ
Q: How do I verify a certificate is genuine?
A: Take the number to the issuing body directly rather than to the supplier. Ente Certificazione Macchine, ICR, UDEM, UAC and BST all operate published websites with contact channels. Email the issuer with the certificate number and the manufacturer name and ask them to confirm scope and validity. Most respond within a few days, and a non-response from an issuer is a meaningful answer.
Q: Should I pay for a third-party pre-shipment inspection?
A: For a capital purchase in the 30 to 100 BBL range, generally yes. Inspection typically costs a small fraction of a percent of order value, and it is the last point at which a defect costs the supplier rather than you. Specify the inspection standard and the acceptance criteria in the contract, not verbally.
Q: What payment terms are normal for imported brewery equipment?
A: Staged payments tied to production milestones are standard practice, commonly a deposit at order, a tranche at a defined production stage, and a balance around inspection or shipment. The negotiable element is what triggers each tranche. Push for verifiable events such as a passed inspection rather than calendar dates, since a calendar date pays out whether or not the equipment exists.
Q: Is an overseas supplier cheaper once everything is counted?
A: Frequently, though the margin narrows considerably after freight, duties, installation and any local compliance work. Build a landed-cost comparison rather than an equipment-price comparison. Also price the operational risk honestly: a two-week wait for a part from overseas costs a production brewery real money, and that figure belongs in the comparison alongside the invoice.
Q: What documentation should arrive with the equipment?
A: At minimum: general arrangement and P&ID drawings as built, material certificates for pressure-retaining components, the EC Declaration of Conformity or local equivalent, PLC programme documentation and access credentials, electrical schematics, and operation and maintenance manuals in a language your staff read. Specify the language in the contract. Bilingual documentation is a reasonable requirement and an unreasonable surprise if raised after delivery.
Q: How does a warranty claim work across borders in practice?
A: The mechanics vary by contract, which is exactly why the clause matters more than the promise. The recurring failure points are freight direction on replacement parts, whether labour and travel are covered, and whether components carry the original manufacturer’s warranty instead of the supplier’s. Settle all three in writing at contract stage, and identify a named individual at the supplier who owns claims.