11 replies to this topic

[Ryan H.]

Hi All: I’m just curious if anyone here who has a GFSI certification also receives 3rd party audits from there customers? It I may, which customers do?

Thanks everyone!

[pHruit]

Hi Ryan,
Yes, we have BRC Food and BRC Agents & Brokers certification, and still receive customer audits for both the manufacturing and brokerage parts of the business.

Due to confidentiality obligations understandably I can't name the customers. Generally it will be where we're a supplier of significant volumes and that increases the potential risk assessment for them in terms of significance to their business. It seems to be relatively common in the UK.

We'd do the same with our suppliers - if it's a key ingredient then we may audit once every three years in addition to using the supplier's GFSI certification. We'd also potentially do this if we happen to be auditing in the area - if we're making a trip from the UK to South America or South East Asia then it's efficient to group as many useful audits together as possible.

For what it's worth, we do find significant variance in the actual standards and capabilities of sites that are all certified to what are nominally equivalent benchmarked levels - seen some quite disturbing things and woeful basic misunderstandings even at a senior level in sites that on paper are certified to a reasonable level...

[Ryan H.]

Thanks pHruit. I was just curious and i appreciate your response. I know it happens, i was more curious on HOW often it does happen. Of course if your a major supplier to them that makes sense too. 

 

Thanks! 

[Leila Burin]

Hello Ryan,

indeed, it is the key questions all elaborators do them self: why do my clients keep auditing me if I have a GFSI audit?

I see this over and over, not a "decrease auditing by clients", as once said as a advantage to be under the GFSI umbrella....

Why? Well, many may answer, every one has their own, such as i.e, the clients still do not fully "trust" certain CB, or just want to go to a warm weather to have a good wine....

Leila

[Ryan H.]

Thanks for the response Leila!

[mgourley]

We are certificated to BRC. We co-pack for a very large world wide baking company. Their audits are, in essence, the BRC Standard.
Why do they demand virtually the same audit? Because they can.

We were looking at doing business with a rather large international sub sandwich shop. They wanted to do their own audit. We were looking to do business with a rather gigantic online retailer. They wanted to do their own audit.

 

The admirable goal of GFSI approved audits being accepted by all retailers/customers, etc., is unfortunately a load of male bovine feces.

 

Marshall

[Ryan H.]

Marshall: I could not agree more. Thanks for your input. 

[YanislavValev]

Hi Ryan,

We have a few  production sites and all of them are IFS Food certified. We are doing business with all of the food store chains that operate in Bulgaria plus some abroad. Some of them only ask for a GFSI certificate, some would conduct a third party audit if we didn't have the certificate but then we'd be obligated  to get certified within 6 motnh lets say, some require both a GFSI certificate and your permit to be unannounced audited by them (or a third party).

But just like somebody mentioned above, customers may not trust a certain CB or even both CBs and suppliers in whole regions (east Europe for example). Not to mention that this is a great tool for negotiation of prices and contract conditions - imagine it: you have a GFSI certificate and work with a huge customer; they decide to to show up and audit you and you have thirty minutes to let them in; they find minor non-conformities and start making huge deal out of it. The result is 'your FSMS is not so great, the product you deliver us has a doubtful quality, if you want to continue working with us you need to lower prices'. This is actually a real thing that happened to us in 2016.

I believe the frequency of third party audits by certain customers depends on their policy (and some can be very aggressive) and whether you're considered a a trusted supplier. 

[Ryan H.]

Thanks Yanislav! Appreciate the feedback.

[pHruit]

The admirable goal of GFSI approved audits being accepted by all retailers/customers, etc., is unfortunately a load of male bovine feces.

 

This is the truest thing I've read on the internet in months. I'd like it twice if I could!
These days it seems that GFSI really serves more as a prerequisite for consideration for supply to some types of client, at least in the UK.

[SQFconsultant]

As an SQF Consultant we are many times tasked with helping our clients to find/select suppliers.

If, let's say there are two suppliers identified for a certain ingredient we will normally default to the one that is GFSI certified and require the potential supplier to provide a full copy of their most recent audit indicating the name of the CB and by whom (auditor) the audit was undertaken.

Further we required copies of the previous GFSI audits and all CARS written up and resolutions.

Depending on which CB and/or Auditor name undertook the audits we may request a full audit be commissioned or a summary visit only.

[HACCPApprentice]

Yes we get audits from both, I would say about 30% of our customers come and do their own audit, and about 80% of the larger customers who do repeat runs will do at least one audit.

Edited by HACCPApprentice, 28 February 2019 - 02:07 PM.