Cologne, Germany  - TUV Rheinland Group, a German firm that certifies compliance of products with regulations, marked 30 years of doing business in Asia on Thursday, noting that it now had laboratories at 40 places in 14 Asian nations.

The first testing laboratory opened on October 2, 1978 in Tokyo with just three staff.

Today the Cologne-based firm has an Asian payroll of more than 2,600 and last year had regional revenues of 160 million euros (230 million dollars), nearly half that sum in China.

TUV surveys industrial plant, services and products such as home appliances, solar cells, medical equipment, toys, mobile phones and tools, and certifies them as meeting quality and safety standards.

Clients nominate the national or international standards which they aim to satisfy.

China and Japan are TUV's key Asian markets. It has special chemical-analysis laboratories in China, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Among current projects, TUV is advising in Taiwan on the introduction of road charging and inspecting hotels in Indonesia to see if their quality-control systems are up to standard.

In South Korea the company is developing a safety policy for magnetic levitation railway systems.

The Cologne group says it leads the world in testing of solar cells and is inspecting the solar modules made by 70 per cent of the world's makers of the products, principally in Japan, China and Germany. (dpa)