The NLA-SA is a non-profit stakeholder body that represents the voice of South African laboratories. Having over 300 organisations who are members representing the diverse nature of activities within testing and calibration services.
A primary objective of NLA-SA is to be a truly representative association for accredited and non-accredited laboratories and includes measuring, testing, calibration, verification and other bodies, as well as laboratories which operate in well-defined areas of R&D in the natural and applied sciences.

Our sub-committees continue to play an important role in both the accreditation and measurement environments.

• MatCivils: This committee focusses on laboratories involved in road construction materials testing.
• STSA: This committee is focused on stack emission testing and is working hard with the community and the regulator to enable these laboratories to become accredited.

The objectives of the NLA are:

• To represent the experience, knowledge and formulated opinions of South African laboratories on a technical, ethical and commercial level.
• To assist in the interpretation of accreditation requirements, to identify generic national accreditation needs and to resolve issues that were not covered by the SANAS Specialist Technical Committees (STC).
• To establish a singular interface of representation of its members with SANAS, SABS and the NML.
• To provide a mechanism for technology transfer among its members by means of workshops, seminars, symposia, specialist interest groups, printed reports and newsletters.
• To establish effective communication channels for technology transfer with organisations that have similar objectives to the NLA (Such as Eurolab).

The NLA-SA is based in Lynwood, Pretoria where our full-time staff complement of nine is based.