Certificate expired and waiting for new certificate
Hello,
Since October 2017 we have a BRC A&B certificate.
According to the BRC guidelines we had to audit again before 20th of October 2018.
So, we did. We had 1 major and 6 minors.
Some issues to fix in 28 days. So, we did.
Our certificate would expire at the first of December 2018.
Now we are still waiting because our auditor still needs extra information for his report.
I'm not sure if that is possible according to the BRC guidelines?
We do not have a certificate at this moment and I'm not sure we will get a new one.
Strange isn't it?
Kind Regards
That's way too long for the certificate to be re issued. I would contact the CB directly and ask for the technical manager to find our what is going on. Technically right now you're in a situation where your facility is NOT certified which could lead to other problems
I don't know if it's a particular peculiarity in the BRC system, but we have had a few small "gaps" between old/new certificate for both the Food and A&B standards over the years. I'd originally assumed that this was due to our CBs, but I've spoken with various other people on different CBs who've experienced the same thing and seen it with a few suppliers too.
There seems to be some appreciation of this, at least around Western Europe, as the "yes our old certificate expired, yes we've had our audit and completed our CAs on time, no we don't have the new cert yet" has been uniformly accepted by customers to date.
Is the auditor waiting on further information from your business, Harald, or is this an internal delay within your CB?
As per Scampi's suggestion I'd give them a call ASAP and ask to speak to the most senior person you can think of - last time we were in this position I bent the ear of the Director of European Ops and he agreed that the service had been poor but that they would like to continue to get our business. The new certificate arrived quite quickly after that ;)
Dear Harald,
Unfortunately, this happens sometimes with such annual recertification schemes. I read above, that this is even common in Western Europe.
If there are actions lying upon you, you should take them as quickly as possible and send the required information to the CB.
After that, a call to remind the CB that you are waiting for the certificate is also good to do. The reaudit due date was respected in this case, and that's the thing that matters. Your company is nominated for certification and now it's only wait for some administrative handlings.
So, apparently there is nothing going wrong, but stay vigilant that it doesn't take too long.
Kind regards,
Gerard Heerkens
Gerard/PHfruit are correct & I see this happening more & more across European manufacturing facilities.
In order to remain competitive the certification bodies often don't have sufficient resource to manage all activities & new certificates are often late.
Contacting the most senior person at the certification body is your best course of action
Thank you all for your posts.
In the meantime I've received an e mail message from our CB with apologies. And a letter in which they state that our audit went without problems and, due to internal problems, a new certificate will arrive later.
Kind regards,
Harald
I have experienced with with ISO certificates but so far not with the BRC. Sorry to hear about your troubles. As everyone stated about the Technical Manager is a good route to take.