4 replies to this topic

[fadetoblack]

Yesterday, I was searching in BRC Directory for something and than decided to check BRC Food certifications by country. You may be interested.

It is very wide spread all over the world: 132 countries

 

It is surprising that UK is not #1, good work Italy.

 

Source: BRC Directory, June 2019

 

Here are Top 20 countries:

 

 

Large picture: https://www.gursahak...ood-Country.jpg

 

Full List here.

[kfromNE]

Interesting though I wonder the percentages rather than numbers. In the USA for example, while the number is high for the amount of companies with BRC, there are also a lot of food companies. For US companies not exporting, SQF is the scheme of choice. At least that's what I found in my research.

 

So while Italy may barely beat out the UK, the percentage of UK businesses certified with BRC may be higher.

[ilonar]

The real problem is that in UK they don't want to understand that all GFSI standards are equivalent, and if you are certified for one of them, you don't need to be BRC certified. For example, we are both BRC and IFS food certified (2 audits, extra costs, make sure that all your procedures comply with what both standards require and always pick out the worst scenario: BRC allows one plain wedding ring, but IFS says no jewellery allowed, so our hygiene rules say no jewellery). We have clients who need IFS for Germany and BRC for UK.

 

One of our clients started supplying seasonally to UK. Although they have IFS Food and Broker, all products have to pass via our packing house, because they don't have BRC and the customer in UK was asking for it. We even had to do a small audit with the customer, so that the customer can show the audit results to the supermarkets and they can believe that we have all procedures in place.

 

So it is more about what the client/customer wants, when it is decided to go for a certain certification. Probably all those Italian companies are/were supplying at a certain moment to UK and they had to have BRC.

 

Actually it would be interesting to see the same chart for all GFSI standards to have an impression about the way different certification schemes are chosen. 

[pHruit]

The real problem is that in UK they don't want to understand that all GFSI standards are equivalent 

 

I think the real problem may be that the UK doesn't view the value of the GFSI-benchmarked schemes in quite the same way, and even for BRC AA+ sites physically in the UK, it's still commonplace for multiple retailer announced and unannounced audits each year. In part this is because they are to some extent locked in a cycle of making "competing" standards of their own - pretty much the exact opposite of what BRC was originally supposed to do

These days we assume that GFSI is treated more as an "entry level" requirement for a lot of our UK customers - without it they probably won't even bother considering you (and many of ours have e.g. contractual clauses that delist us instantly if we drop below a grade B at BRC), and with it you're considered good enough to qualify to start the actual assessment process.

 

Having said all that, IME there are parts of the UK industry that do have issues with wilfully ignoring the principle of the GFSI benchmarking process and blindly assuming that BRC is "better" (or not bothering to think about it at all, and just taking it as the easiest approach to a box-ticking exercise that doesn't actually help anyone). And it's not just BRC either - I've had issues with clients insisting that results from labs with ISO17025 accreditation are not acceptable, because they will only accept results from labs that are accredited with UKAS.

 

Of course the other element is that we want all of these extra things but don't actually want to pay for them, and I've had various suppliers over the years say that they simply don't want to offer product for the UK market as it's not worth their time.

I can't imagine why we're not the most popular country in Europe

[zanorias]

This is an interesting chart indeed. I do somewhat agree with Ilonar's post and my experience so far in the (uk based) industry suggests there's a a slight lack of clarity regarding accreditation schemes and the GFSI bench mark, which I find more common amongst non-technical staff but more understandable I suppose. For example, my colleagues in purchasing would likely ask a supplier for their "BRC certificate" as default, and be confused when they receive an IFS or FSSC 22000 certificate in response. Similar to pHruit, I have a number of customers that contractually require us to maintain BRC with a minimum grade to keep their business, so it is in our interest to stick with BRC.

 

I can't imagine why we're not the most popular country in Europe

 

Mystery. *enter the Boris*