Coles CFMSR Standard

Hi all,

Just wanted to throw this one out to the wonderful and knowledgable people on IFSQN and hear your thoughts...especially if you deal with Coles.

Coles CFMSR standard.

We (like many of you) supply companies with our product.....it's kind of the reason we produce the product  :spoton:

One of the companies that we DO NOT supply (at this current time) is Coles.

We DO supply companies that have contracts with Coles though.

We supply a raw material / ingredient that these companies further process etc to supply their Coles contract.

Recently Coles has contacted us to say we needed an audit to become CFMSR certified 'as a requirement' because we supply Coles.

This is incorrect.....we have no contract with Coles (Coles CFMSR certification only required if you have a contract with them and supply a Coles branded product to them) and in my opinion they are acting unethically in circumventing their supplier (whom they have a contract with) and trying to insinuate that we are the supplier to them.

If I did not understand the standard and requirements then our company would now be starting this process (at significant cost as you would all know....another standard, more audits, different requirements etc etc).

They changed tact when questioned about why they were even contacting us and then implied that they were seeing if we were interested in obtaining it in the future....blah blah  :rofl2:

It seems like they may want some leverage over their customers??

Of course we would all love all of our suppliers suppliers to be certified to our own standard (if we had one!) but this would seem to be a never ending rabbit hole.

Would'nt their questions about suppliers of raw materials be with their suppliers who would then in turn follow it up with us?

Thanks for hearing my rant....I apprecaite it!!  :giggle: