JAKIM halal certificate codes and categories, explained

What does the number in a JAKIM certificate reference mean?

The digit at the end of a JAKIM reference number identifies the certification scheme the certificate was issued under, and it lines up with the applicant category the company is filed under. Code 1 is a food and beverage product certificate. Code 8 is contract manufacturing (OEM), which certifies the plant rather than any product — which is why a company holding only code 8 lists no products of its own.

How a JAKIM reference number is put together

A certificate reference looks like this. Only one part of it varies by what was certified.

JAKIM.700-2/3/1 140-08/2024

JAKIM.700-2/3/

The file prefix. Identical on every Malaysian halal certificate, and it tells you nothing about the company or the product.

1

The scheme digit. This is the part that carries meaning, and the part JAKIM does not define anywhere public. Everything below is about this one character.

140-08/2024

The running serial, then the month and year the certificate was issued. A company with several certificates has a different serial on each.

A company can hold several certificates at once, so it can carry several digits at once. D&O Nutraceutical, for example, holds both 1 and 8: it makes products under its own halal certificate and it also manufactures under its clients'.

What are JAKIM's halal applicant categories?

This part is not in dispute. JAKIM publishes ten applicant categories and exposes them as filters on its own directory. These are quoted, not deduced. Company counts are from our capture of the directory and cover only the categories this site collects.

A company can hold more than one category at the same time — a factory that makes both supplements and skincare is filed under both.

What does each scheme digit mean?

JAKIM does not publish this. The Manual Procedure for Malaysian Halal Certification and the certification pages on the portal define the categories but never the digit. So the table below is derived from the directory itself, and each row says how much weight it carries.

How sure we are, row by row

Published

JAKIM states this publicly and we link to where. Nothing on our side is being added.

Evidenced

JAKIM does not state it, but the directory settles it: the number of companies holding the digit matches the number JAKIM files under that category, and every company holding the digit on its own sits in that one category. Thousands of records, no counter-examples.

Inferred

Our reading of who holds it, and it could be wrong. These three digits never appear on their own, so the isolation test cannot be run on them. Treat as a hypothesis, not a fact.

How we worked this out, so you can check it

Three tests, run over the whole captured directory. Anyone with the same data can repeat them and get the same answer, which is the only reason we are willing to publish a meaning JAKIM has not.

The digits fall into two families that never mix

One more pattern worth knowing, because it is a useful sanity check on any single certificate. Codes 1, 2, 4 and 7 only ever appear together — the food side. Codes 3, 5, 6 and 9 only ever appear together — cosmetics, pharmaceutical, consumer goods and medical devices. No company in the capture holds a digit from both families. Code 8 is the exception and appears alongside all of them, which is what you would expect of a scheme that describes how a plant works rather than what it makes.

Why codes 2, 4 and 7 never appear on their own

These three are the most interesting rows in the table, and the least certain. Not one company in the capture holds any of them by itself — they always sit next to code 1. Reading the companies that hold them gives a consistent picture, and it points at the three categories this site deliberately does not collect: food premises, abattoirs and logistics. A business that is only a restaurant chain or only a cold-storage operator would never appear in a directory of factories at all, so the only ones we see are those that are also manufacturers. That explains both what the digits look like and why they are never alone.

• Code 7 — 64 companies, and the list reads as a poultry industry roll call: AYAMAS, LAY HONG, QL FARMS, NB POULTRY, PERAK DUCK, plus farms, hatcheries and processing houses. We read it as the abattoir scheme.
• Code 2 — 223 companies, headed by AEON, Brahim's airline catering, hospital catering, ice-cream and doughnut chains. They average 426 certified products each, which is what a menu across many outlets looks like. We read it as the food premises scheme.
• Code 4 — 37 companies, mostly cold stores, seafood warehouses, freight and distribution firms, with a few large manufacturers that run their own distribution centres. We read it as the logistics scheme.

Why does a factory show zero certified products?

Because product certificates and plant certificates are different things. Code 8 certifies that a plant is fit to manufacture for other people; the finished goods then carry the client's halal certificate, not the manufacturer's. So a company holding code 8 and nothing else is fully certified and correctly listed, and has no products in its own name at JAKIM.

In this capture, 221 companies hold code 8 alone and every one of them lists zero products. Every company holding a product-certificate digit lists at least one. There is no case anywhere in the data of a product certificate with no products behind it.

This matters when comparing factories. A zero here is a statement about certification structure, not about size, quality or how busy a plant is — some of the largest contract manufacturers in the country show zero.

What this site leaves out, and why

KilangHALAL is a directory of kilang — factories. Four of JAKIM's ten categories are outside that, and leaving them out is a decision rather than a gap in the data. Certificates from those schemes still show on a company's page when the company also manufactures, because hiding part of a company's own record would be a worse distortion than showing a scheme we do not otherwise cover.

• Food premises (PE) — restaurants, caterers, central kitchens and retail food counters. A halal-certified kitchen is not a manufacturer and a buyer looking for one is not served by having thousands of them in the results.
• Abattoirs (PS) — slaughterhouses and meat processing plants. A separate industry with its own buyers, its own regulator relationships and its own way of being compared. It deserves a directory built for it, not a corner of this one.
• Logistics (PL) — halal warehousing, cold chain and transport. These are service providers to manufacturers rather than manufacturers, and mixing the two would make the OEM comparison meaningless.
• International (IN) — listed by JAKIM as a category but holding no records we can capture, so there is nothing to show.

What we show in the directory

On a company page we label only codes 1 and 8, the two the site's own filters depend on. The rest are printed exactly as they appear on the certificate, without interpretation. That is deliberate: this page is where a claim can be shown with its evidence and its confidence level attached, and a small coloured tag next to a company name is not.

What this page does not claim

• That JAKIM has confirmed any of this. It has not. We asked the data, not the regulator, and the categories are the only part quoted from an official source.
• That the meanings are fixed. JAKIM can add, retire or renumber a scheme whenever it revises its procedures, and would be under no obligation to tell a third-party directory.
• That codes 2, 4 and 7 are settled. They are a reading of the evidence, labelled as such in every table on this page, and we would rather be publicly wrong in a marked box than quietly wrong in an unmarked one.
• That a code says anything about quality. The scheme a certificate was issued under describes what was certified. It is not a grade, a ranking or an audit score.
• This is a reference for orientation. For any decision that carries money or risk, verify the certificate on JAKIM's own portal — the link is on every company page here.

Common questions

What is the number at the end of a Malaysian halal certificate?

It identifies the certification scheme the certificate was issued under. Code 1 is a food and beverage product certificate and code 8 is contract manufacturing. JAKIM publishes its applicant categories but has never published a definition of these digits.

What are the JAKIM halal certification categories?

Ten: food and beverage (PR), contract manufacturing (OEM), cosmetics and personal care (KO), consumer goods (BG), pharmaceutical (FM), medical device (MD), food premises (PE), abattoir (PS), logistics (PL) and international (IN). This site lists the first six, which are the manufacturing ones.

Why does a halal-certified factory show no certified products?

Because it holds a contract-manufacturing certificate (code 8) and no product certificate of its own. It manufactures under its clients' halal certificates, so the products are recorded against those clients rather than the factory. 221 companies in this capture are in that position.

Can one company hold several codes?

Yes, and many do. Each certificate carries its own digit, so a factory that sells its own brand and also manufactures for others holds both code 1 and code 8. The digits on a company page are the set from all of its certificates.

Is this the official meaning of the codes?

No. The category list is JAKIM's own and is quoted. The meaning of the scheme digits is our analysis of 8,291 captured company records, because JAKIM does not publish one. Six of the nine are backed by an exact match between holder counts and category sizes; three are labelled as inferences.

How do I verify a halal certificate is real?

Check it on JAKIM's own portal rather than on any directory, including this one. Every company page here carries a direct link to the official record, and certificates can be renewed or revoked at any time between our captures.

Do these codes ever change?

They can. JAKIM revises its procedures periodically and is under no obligation to notify third parties. We re-run the analysis monthly and log any movement on this page, which is why it carries a verification date.

Can I cite this page?

Yes. Cite it as KilangHALAL, with the verification date shown above, and please carry the distinction between the published categories and our inferred digits — that distinction is the point of the page.