3rd Party Consignment Warehouses
I work for a paperboard packing manufacturing company in the USA and we are working towards and SQF Certification. We have 2 3rd party warehouses at customer locations for which we have consignment agreements with. My question is: do we need to make sure the 2 3rd party locations are in compliance with all SQF requirements if they are under consignment and not techincally coimapny owned warehouses? I.E. the inventory in the 3rd party warehouse is still technically our property however the warehouse itself is owned by our customers.
the way I have handled 3rd party warehouses has been to send them a self assessment and then, since they were close by go audit them myself at least once a year. I would also get word of mouth updates from truckers going into these places that prompted more than one unannounced audit.
Thank you for your response. Do you know if SQF requires these consignment locations to be listed and audited as part of our certification?
There is no requirement to audit.
Only from an ownership standpoint should you conduct inspections to ensure the condition of their building and to make certain that your materials (still under your ownership) are not impacted in any way.