the made-in-China business of the DGT’s V-16 beacons

82 days.

That is the time that has passed since the DGT approved for the first time a connected V-16 beacon on December 22, 2022 until March 14, 2023. Less than three months later from that December 22, Distribuciones Escudero Fijo SL You could now put your own connected device on the market.

The Valencia-based company was the first to put a V-16 beacon connected and approved by the DGT on the market. made in china. The company specializes in the import and distribution of consumer products in our country, so it must have seen clearly that it was time to manufacture its own devices in the Asian country to reduce costs.

The certificate confirming the approval and who is behind the manufacturing of the product is easily accessible. Both that of this Valencian company and that of any other approved product can be found on the DGT website. And with that list it is very easy to verify that the vast majority of connected V-16 beacons are being manufactured in China.

Spanish approval, Chinese business

Photo printers, a Philips car radio, activity bracelets or a Tesla Smart TV. They are all products that You can find it on the Distribuciones Escudero Fijo website. next to the connected V-16 beacon.

The company, as we said, is by no means the only one that produces its beacons in China to approve them in Spain and sell them in our country. In fact, the DGT collects 29 companies with certifications to distribute its approved products in Spain. Only seven are Spanish. and the weight of products made in Spain It is reduced much more if we look at the total volume of registered beacons. Of 239 approved products, only 29 are produced in Spain, just over 10%.

This company sells, under different names, up to five connected V-16 beacons, four of which have slight modifications to sell them as different products on the market. But this is almost a rarity because some Chinese brands have made it an art to sell the same licensed product under different names.

The latter is the case of Limbur Technology, a company that manufactures these connected V-16 beacons in China and puts them on the Spanish market, highlighting the same product with different names. At this moment it has 99 active approvals despite having only seven different models on the market.

The process is always the same. The Ningbo Chakesi Electronic company, based in Zhejiang (China), produces the connected V-16 beacons that are then sold under brands with names as diverse as Soslight, Orflect either Don Happy. The approvals are carried out in the Idiada laboratories (there are only two laboratories with permission to carry out these approvals) and in some cases the same device is approved repeatedly (up to 25 identical devices on June 30, 2025) to be sold under different names.

Manufacturers have little room to play with approvals and put different products on the market. In some cases, for example, the new approval only corresponds to the addition of a new suction cup to facilitate installation or that the product is now brighter.

The pattern repeats with other distributors. Ledel Solutions has 30 active approvals. Of them, up to 24 different brands sell the same product. Four of them repeat with a variation of the connected V16 beacon and only one of them sells an approved product such as EmergLight X, which has the same name as the company that puts it on the market. The manufacturing, as with any other product approved by Ledel Solutions, comes from China.

And the connected V-16 beacon has all the conditions to be a product that China can easily supply. We are talking about a very low-cost technological product. A casing, some resistance to dust and water, active battery for 30 minutes and a space for a SIM card. It is the perfect product for mass produce at very low cost.

With the approvals registered by the DGT, right now there are 239 products on the market but only 70 are, really, different products. Most of the time we are talking about the same product repeated and approved repeatedly by the same distributor and then sold under different brands in different channels.

Photo | DGT and Escudero Fixed Distributions

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