How to Read an FMTTI Test Report Number

A client forwards us a quotation with an FMTTI report number attached, or a tender asks for one and they want to know whether the document they hold is the right kind. It comes up often enough that we thought it was worth writing down properly.

Here's the sort of thing you'll be looking at:

ICE/SRFMTTI, ANANTAPUR/2025-26/43/43/1975

It looks impenetrable the first time. It isn't — and because the institute publishes its full register of released reports, an FMTTI report number is one of the few things in this process you can look up yourself in a few minutes.

Start with the register

SRFMTTI publishes a list of every test report it has released since inception, 1989-90 to the present, running well past a hundred pages. Each row carries six fields:

Field	What it holds
Sl. No.	The cumulative serial — 1 for the first report ever released, 1,977 for the most recent as of January 2026
Name of machine / implement	Make, model and machine type, e.g. "VST, RANGER 80 POWER WEEDER"
Type of test	Commercial (ICT), Batch, or Confidential
Test report no.	The report number itself
Date of release	Month and year
Address of manufacturer / applicant	The applicant on record, with full address

That last column is more useful than it looks. The register records the applicant — the party that applied for the test — which isn't always the same as the brand on the machine. Contract manufacturing and distribution arrangements are perfectly normal in this industry, and the register simply tells you who the institute dealt with. Knowing that up front saves a confusing conversation later.

The numbering has evolved three times

This is the part that trips people up. A report from 1994 and a report from 2026 look nothing like each other, and both are entirely genuine. The institute has simply refined its numbering as volumes grew.

The early format (1990s)

A compact two-part number with a machine-family prefix:

• Imp.40/44 — an implement
• Comp.1/14 — a component
• Th.1/35 — a thresher
• HT-2/45 — a hand tool
• Machine-1/23 — general machinery

The pattern is prefix, serial within that family, then the cumulative serial. Imp.40/44 is the 40th implement tested and the 44th report the institute had released overall. Perfectly adequate when you're releasing a handful of reports a year.

The middle format (through the early 2020s)

Same logic, updated prefixes, much larger numbers:

• Machine-465/1452
• T-110/1447 — a trailer
• PT-161/1451 — a power tiller
• IMP-388/1456

Machine-465/1452 is the 465th in that series and the 1,452nd report overall.

The current long format

Since around 2025-26, reports carry a six-part number that encodes considerably more:

ICE/SRFMTTI, ANANTAPUR/2025-26/43/43/1975

Part	In the example	What it tells you
Prefix	ICE	Machine family. Others in current use include TT (tractor trailer), SPE, PP and H&TH.
Institute	SRFMTTI, ANANTAPUR	Which institute released it, and where
Financial year	2025-26	The year of release
Serial	43	A running number within that financial year
Serial	43	Runs in step with the preceding figure in every current entry
Cumulative	1975	The report's position in the register since inception

The one thing that holds across all three

The last number is always the cumulative serial. Imp.40/44 ends in 44. Machine-465/1452 ends in 1452. The current long form ends in 1975.

That's genuinely handy. Because the register runs in chronological order, the cumulative serial tells you roughly when a report was released even if the date on your copy is faint or missing. A report in the 1,400s sits around late 2022. A report in the 1,900s is recent. It's a quick orientation check before you go looking anything up.

Read the test type too

The "type of test" column is the field we'd most encourage you to check, because it changes what a report can be used for:

• Commercial (ICT) — an Initial Commercial Test, the standard route for a machine ready for commercial production. This is what most schemes and tenders are asking for.
• Batch Test — for a machine already in commercial production that has previously been through an Initial Commercial Test.
• Confidential — performance information produced for the applicant's own development purposes. A confidential report can't be published or used commercially without the institute's written approval.

That last one is worth knowing about. A confidential report is a real FMTTI report and a genuinely valuable engineering document — it's simply not intended as commercial proof, and the institute marks it as such in the register. If a confidential report is the one in hand, the institute's regulations do allow it to be converted to commercial where the commercial test procedure was followed throughout, on written request.

If something doesn't line up

Usually there's a simple explanation — a transcription slip, a report from a different institute, or a batch test number quoted where an ICT was meant. Occasionally the report is real but isn't the type the scheme or tender needs, which is the more common issue in our experience.

Either way it's worth settling before money moves: which report the machine actually holds, whether it's still inside its validity period, and whether it's the right type for what you're chasing. That's the ground we cover under test process guidance on the buying side and subsidy and procurement support on the compliance side.

Most of the value here is simply knowing the register exists. The institute publishes it so that reports can be checked — it's there to be used.