Procurement · Quality assurance
How to read a camellia oil COA — a buyer's checklist
Every serious supplier will hand you a certificate of analysis. Fewer will tell you what to look for on it. This page walks through each parameter on a camellia oil COA, what it actually indicates, and the limits under GB/T 11765-2018 — using our own latest batch as the worked example. We publish these numbers because our whole model depends on buyers who audit their suppliers.
First: who issued it?
A COA is only as good as the laboratory behind it. A self-issued COA from the seller's own bench is a data point, not verification. Insist on third-party laboratory results, a named testing standard, and a batch number that matches the drums you receive. Our COAs are issued by an independent laboratory against GB/T 11765-2018 (the Chinese national standard for oil-tea camellia seed oil) and travel with every shipment.
Parameter by parameter
| Parameter | What it tells you | GB/T limit | Our latest batch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acid value | Free fatty acids — a proxy for seed quality and pressing discipline. Rises with poor raw material or careless storage. | ≤ 2.0 mg/g | 0.69 — 2.9× under limit |
| Peroxide value | Early oxidation. High values mean the oil is already ageing — shorter shelf life for you. | ≤ 0.25 g/100g | 0.033 — 7.5× under limit |
| Insoluble impurities | Filtration quality after pressing. | ≤ 0.05% | 0.02% |
| Lead (Pb) / Arsenic (As) | Heavy-metal uptake from soil and water. Non-negotiable for food and personal-care supply chains. | per standard | Not detected |
| Benzo[a]pyrene | A combustion contaminant — the tell-tale of high-heat or careless drying/roasting. Low-temperature processing keeps it out. | per standard | Not detected |
| Aflatoxin B1 | Mould toxin from damp seed storage. The single most important safety line on the certificate. | per standard | Not detected |
Red flags on any supplier's COA
Watch for these regardless of who you buy from: “typical values” presented instead of batch-specific results; a certificate with no batch number, or one that doesn't match the shipment; no named testing standard; a laboratory you can't identify or contact; and values sitting suspiciously at exactly the legal limit. Any one of these deserves a follow-up question before money moves.
What to request before contract
Ask for a sample drum accompanied by the COA for that same batch, plus the technical data sheet with the full fatty-acid profile. Then verify independently — your own laboratory, your own methods. That sequence (sample → matching COA → independent verification → contract) is the audit trail that protects you, and any supplier who resists it is telling you something. Full specifications for both our oils are on the specifications page; why the numbers stay consistent batch to batch is covered in single-origin vs blended.