The Cap. 46 Industrial Licence: Who Must Register a Factory

This page is the industrial registration operating file: which factories Cap. 46 reaches, which document the investment figure produces, and who may hold it.

• The premises file that binds with no headcount floor — which workplaces OSHA registers
• The trading licence this one does not replace — business licensing in Tanzania
• The schedule that closes the small band — the restricted list for non-citizens
• The gate that sits before civil works — when an impact assessment is required
• The certificate an inspector asks for at the door — fire safety certificates on premises

As at 21 September 2026. Confirm the live position on brela.go.tz and osha.go.tz; this file rests on Cap. 46 and its 2000 Regulations, Cap. 297 with GN No. 149 of 2015, Cap. 191, Cap. 130 and GN No. 487A.

Ten workers on any day, and nothing else

Section 2 of the National Industries (Licensing and Registration) Act, No. 10 of 1967, defines an industry as any factory in which ten or more workers are employed on any day. Not ten on average, not ten at year end. A line running six people most of the year and twenty through a packing season is an industry on those days.

Section 6 carries the prohibition: no person shall establish any industry unless a certificate of registration has been obtained for it. It bites at establishment, not at first production, and factory reaches any building or place, and any plant in or on it, intended for manufacture.

Worker is drawn to match — a person employed by the owner, whether duties are performed at the factory or outside it. A driver and an outworker count toward ten, and an inspector rebuilds the count from the payroll.

Below ten workers, and still not unregulated

A workshop that never employs ten on any day owes no Cap. 46 certificate. It owes everything else: Cap. 297 reaches a workplace rather than an industry and has no headcount floor, the business licence binds on the trading activity, environmental screening on the site, the Bureau of Standards on the product. Cap. 46 falls away; four files do not, and the heaviest penalty here sits among them.

Certificate or licence, and what BRELA charges

Above the line the Act produces two different documents, and the National Industries Regulations, 2000 decide which. Regulation 8: a project with a fixed investment cost not exceeding one hundred million shillings takes a certificate of registration, and one exceeding that figure takes an industrial licence. The measure is fixed investment cost — not turnover, not paid-up capital, not the value of land already held.

Applications go to the Industrial Licensing Board under section 10; the Registrar of Industries, appointed under section 3, keeps the register; BRELA runs both through its Online Registration System. The published fee follows project cost in five bands: TZS 10,000 to TZS 5,000,000; TZS 50,000 to TZS 10,000,000; TZS 100,000 to TZS 50,000,000; TZS 500,000 to TZS 100,000,000; and TZS 800,000 above that. The last step is TZS 300,000, and it lands on exactly the shilling where regulation 8 changes the document.

The documents have different lives. A temporary industrial licence runs three years; a permanent one has no expiry; a certificate of registration does not lapse but stops being correct once the plant outgrows the band. An unimplemented project may be cancelled after three years.

Item 15, and the band reserved for citizens

GN No. 487A of 2025, published on 28 July 2025 under the Business Licensing Act, Cap. 101, closes fifteen activities to non-citizens. Item 15 is the ownership and operation of micro and small industries — not manufacturing as a whole, but the size band.

The Order does not define micro and small. The Ministry of Industry and Trade's Small and Medium Enterprise Development Policy classifies: micro, one to four employees and capital in machinery to TZS 5 million; small, five to forty-nine and to TZS 200 million; medium, fifty to ninety-nine and to TZS 800 million; large, one hundred or more above that. Where an enterprise straddles two, capital governs.

Read against Cap. 46 that leaves a narrow band: an industry employing ten to forty-nine workers is inside the Act and inside item 15 at once. It must register, and a non-citizen may not own it. Foreign shareholding first opens at medium — the size that takes the licence rather than the certificate.

Non-citizens holding valid licences run to expiry; renewal is refused. Carrying on a prohibited activity draws not less than TZS 10 million or six months' imprisonment and cancellation of the residence permit; a citizen fronting for one faces TZS 5 million. A nominee here is the named offence.

Six documents, one factory, and what each governs

The OSHA file is a second registration, not a copy

Section 16(1) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act requires the owner or occupier of a factory or workplace to register before operating. Section 17 separates two things most files merge: the certificate of registration, issued by the Chief Inspector once satisfied the premises are suitable, and the compliance licence, issued annually. One happens once, the other every year.

Section 21 sits earlier: a person constructing a factory submits drawings showing layout, electrical installations, sewage, exits, fire protection and sanitation, and the Chief Inspector approves or refuses with grounds.

GN No. 149 of 2015 carries the mechanics: application on OSHA Form 1(b) for a factory, within seven days of paying the fee in the First Schedule. Manufacturing registration is TZS 80,000 micro, TZS 240,000 small, TZS 480,000 medium and TZS 720,000 large, with general inspection charged annually at 80% of that figure. Section 17(5) carries the sharpest penalty here: not less than TZS 1,000,000 and not more than TZS 5,000,000, or twelve months' imprisonment, with a daily fine while default continues.

NEMC decides before the slab is poured

The Environmental Management Act, Cap. 191, and the Environmental Impact Assessment and Audit Regulations, GN No. 349 of 2005, sort projects by type: a mandatory full assessment, a borderline class screened to decide whether one is needed, a third registered without one, and a special category.

Manufacturing is spread across them by process, not by value. Tanneries, pulp and paper, textile mills, sugar, iron and steel, pharmaceutical and fertiliser plants take the full assessment; stand-alone knitting units, small abattoirs and tobacco processing are only registered. Two identical-cost plants on identical plots can take different routes, and the process description decides it.

The clocks are statutory: the Council reviews within sixty days of the environmental impact statement, and the Minister approves or disapproves within thirty days under section 92(1). Ninety days is not a queue to join after the machinery is ordered.

TBS holds the product; TMDA kept three categories

The Tanzania Food, Drugs and Cosmetics Act, Cap. 219, was amended by the Finance Act 2019, and from 1 July 2019 food and cosmetics — registration, premises inspection, permits and surveillance — moved to the Tanzania Bureau of Standards. TMDA kept medicines, medical devices and diagnostics, so older checklists misroute a cosmetics plant.

The Bureau's instrument is the Standards (Registration of Premises and Certification of Products) Regulations, GN No. 683 of 2021, with fees under GN No. 496L of 2021. Regulation 3(1) prohibits applying a standards mark except by the holder of a licence granted under the standards framed by the Bureau; regulation 5(2) makes registration of a food product and its manufacturing premises an integral part of product certification — one file, not two. A licence runs not more than twelve months.

None of this is the investment side. Incentives sit with TISEZA, formed in 2025 from the former investment centre and the export processing zones authority; a Cap. 46 document permits manufacture and relieves no tax.

The sequence the desks take

1. Count the workers and read the band before a lease is signed. Ten on any day brings Cap. 46 in; micro or small closes the shareholding to citizens.
2. Fix the fixed investment cost. It picks the document, the fee band and the size classification OSHA and the reserved list read.
3. Incorporate at BRELA and take the tax numbers, with beneficial ownership stated as it truly is.
4. Lodge the environmental screening before civil works, and submit the factory drawings under section 21 while they are drawings.
5. Apply to BRELA for the Cap. 46 document, with the business plan and the site evidence.
6. Register the workplace with OSHA before operating, then take the Class A business licence for the trading side.
7. Clear the product with TBS — or TMDA, for a medicine, device or diagnostic — before the first consignment.
8. Diarise what recurs: the annual compliance licence, the inspection fee at 80%, the standards licence.

Two costings to first production

Take a plant with a fixed investment cost of TZS 80,000,000. Not exceeding one hundred million, regulation 8 gives it a certificate of registration and BRELA's fourth band charges TZS 500,000. At that capital it is small: OSHA registration TZS 240,000, annual inspection TZS 192,000, first-year outlay TZS 932,000. Being small, it is inside item 15, and a non-citizen may not own it.

Cost the same plant at TZS 450,000,000 and it exceeds one hundred million: the document is an industrial licence at TZS 800,000, and at that capital it is medium — OSHA registration TZS 480,000, annual inspection TZS 384,000, first-year outlay TZS 1,664,000.

The gap is TZS 732,000, and what it buys is not paperwork: the medium plant sits outside item 15, so a non-citizen may hold it. Illustrative arithmetic on published schedules; fees move.

Mandate-holders this file does not replace

The Registrar of Industries and the Industrial Licensing Board own the Cap. 46 decision through BRELA, which also holds incorporation and the Class A licence. OSHA's Chief Inspector owns the drawings approval, the workplace registration and the annual compliance licence. NEMC reviews the environmental file and the Minister signs the certificate. The Bureau of Standards owns the product and, since 1 July 2019, food and cosmetics; TMDA owns medicines, devices and diagnostics; local authorities own Class B licences; TISEZA owns incentives that no industrial licence confers. Zatra prepares and coordinates the file; it grants no licence and does not practise law.