BIS-Certified GFRP Rebar: India's First, and Why It Matters

A BIS certification — more precisely, a BIS licence — means the Bureau of Indian Standards, India's national standards body, has independently tested the GFRP rebar and audited the manufacturing facility against the relevant Indian Standards, and has granted the manufacturer a licence to apply the BIS Standard Mark (the ISI mark). It is not a self-declaration or a one-time paid certificate: BIS carries out factory inspections and ongoing surveillance, and the manufacturer remains formally accountable for maintaining the standard on every batch. MRG Composites holds BIS licence CM/L-7600217414, the first issued for GFRP bars in India.

MRG Composites holds BIS licence number CM/L-7600217414. It covers our Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) rebar manufactured to the applicable Indian Standards and permits us to apply the BIS Standard Mark (ISI mark) — bearing the IS number and our CM/L licence number — to the product. We can provide a copy of the licence for your project file or tender documentation on request.

GFRP rebar in India is governed primarily by IS 18256:2023, the product specification for FRP bars for concrete reinforcement, and IS 18255:2023, the methods of test for FRP bars. For road and highway infrastructure, IRC: 137-2022 provides the Indian Roads Congress guidelines for the use of GFRP reinforcement. MRG Composites manufactures and tests to these standards, and every batch is verified against them in our in-house laboratory.

The difference is independent verification and accountability. With non-BIS material, the strength, durability, and quality claims are self-declared — no third party has checked them, there is usually no batch-level traceability, and the supplier carries no formal obligation. BIS-licensed rebar has been tested by accredited laboratories, the factory is audited and subject to ongoing BIS surveillance, every batch is traceable, and the manufacturer is licensed and answerable for the standard. For a structure designed to last decades, that verified consistency is the difference between a claim and a guarantee.

Requirements are tightening now that BIS standards for GFRP have been published. Government departments, infrastructure authorities, and IRC-specification projects increasingly require or prefer BIS-licensed reinforcement, and non-BIS material is at growing risk of rejection at the approval stage. Even where it is not yet strictly mandated, specifying BIS-licensed rebar protects the project from quality disputes, liability, and costly rework, so we recommend insisting on a valid BIS licence as standard practice.

Every BIS licence can be verified independently. You can check our licence number CM/L-7600217414 on the BIS Conformity Assessment portal (the BIS CRS system at manakonline.in), which lists the licence holder, the standard, and the current licence status. We can also provide a signed copy of the licence and our latest test reports directly for your tender or project documentation.

Yes. BIS-licensed GFRP rebar manufactured to IS 18256:2023 and IS 18255:2023, with IRC: 137-2022 guidelines for road infrastructure, is suitable and increasingly required for government, public-infrastructure, and IRC-specification projects. Because the material is independently certified and fully traceable, it satisfies the documentation and approval requirements these projects demand — requirements that non-BIS material often cannot meet.

That is precisely what distinguishes a BIS licence from a one-time test certificate. BIS licensing requires a controlled, repeatable manufacturing process, ongoing factory surveillance, and batch-level records, so the standard is maintained continuously rather than demonstrated once. At MRG Composites, every production batch is tested in our in-house laboratory and is traceable from raw material to dispatch, so the quality you specify is the quality you receive — consistently.

The ISI mark is the BIS Standard Mark — the recognised certification mark that a BIS-licensed manufacturer is authorised to apply to its product. On GFRP rebar it appears together with the relevant IS number (for example, IS 18256:2023) and the manufacturer's CM/L licence number (CM/L-7600217414 for MRG Composites). Its presence tells engineers, contractors, and approving authorities that the product is made under a valid, independently audited BIS licence.