Should letter of guarantee for suppliers be updated annually?

Hi everyone, I would like to know if I have to ask every year to all my suppliers an update for the letter of guarantee or it depend of the product (ingredients , packaging, etc..

is there a guiding line for that?



Thanks


Beatlevi

beatlevi,

The way I understand it is that you must have a Supplier Approval pre-requisite program (Section 6.10) in place which defines your company's policy regarding what you do to monitor and assess raw material suppliers, food contact packaging suppliers, and contract service suppliers. I believe that it's up to you (or your QC/QA Manager, SQF Practitioner; whoever writes SQF policy) to state the frequency of reassessments. They could be biannual, annual, every two years..... but whatever your policy is should be defendable (ex. performing a risk assessment on how often a supplier needs to be reassessed) and you have to be doing what you say you do.

According to the SQF 2000 (2008 version) Guidence, the SQF auditor is to verify that your Approved Supplier is current. Most likely the auditor will take one or more raw material(s) and food contact packaging material(s) seen in the warehouse or processing areas and you'll have to show who made them and prove that they're on your current Approved Supplier list.

Regards,
esquef

Beatlevi,

If you can confirm that the first letters of guarantee are related to the same products/ingredients you're using right now, you don't need to ask your suppliers for new ones

BUT! In the new issue 6 of BRC's GSFS the information of the products/ingredientes must be updated at least every three years so think in a new requirement to your suppliers if the letters are quite old

Hoping to be helpful
José

According to the SQF 2000 (2008 version) Guidence, the SQF auditor is to verify that your Approved Supplier is current. Most likely the auditor will take one or more raw material(s) and food contact packaging material(s) seen in the warehouse or processing areas and you'll have to show who made them and prove that they're on your current Approved Supplier list.

Regards,
esquef

I would suggest a risk-based approach to approving your suppliers... maybe create classifications for risk-levels. I'm not an SQF 2000 user, therefore, not sure if the standard prescribed an annual update. One thing is for sure you should maintain records of the results of evaluations and any necessary actions arising from the evaluation. At the end of the day, you should maintain your controls over the suppliers in accordance to the stated criteria/requirements in your procedure.

Thanks for putting up this question. We just completed an audit recently and the auditor did require that we have updates annually. Good or bad news we are now converting to the BRC scheme and have conducted risk analysis on our ingredients and material. In our case we now have a 1-3 year policy for updates rated on the risk.

Dear JimE,

auditor did require that we have updates annually

Based on what ? His personal opinion of average supplier reliability ?

This looks suspiciously similar to items such as official plant water chemical/physical analyses. The (auditor) rule-of-thumb is maybe "when in doubt" make it 1 year, or since last audit, whichever is less".

Rgds / Charles.C

We use 5 year period for LOG's. I see no need to have them updated anymore frequently - as long as the LOG is current, it serves its very limited purpose. Having a piece of paper saying that states they will not sell you non-conforming materials updated with a new date does not decrease the likelihood that you will receive non-conforming materials!

Dear JimE,



Based on what ? His personal opinion of average supplier reliability ?

This looks suspiciously similar to items such as official plant water chemical/physical analyses. The (auditor) rule-of-thumb is maybe "when in doubt" make it 1 year, or since last audit, whichever is less".

Rgds / Charles.C

 

I agree some just aren't needed that frequently, some are. But surprising how many want it annually!! 

I got a minor last year for this. The Auditor found one LOG that was 6 years old. But he couldn't tell me where it specified how often to renew them. This was under SQF. For ease of audits, I went with 5 years. (smh)