Direct vs Indirect Food Contact Paperboard Packaging
Hello,
I work for a paperboard packaging manufacturing facility and we are pursueing our SQF Certification. I am trying to figure out what SQF has to say about direct and indirect in regards to the specific requirements; i.e. can we segragate the requirements based on packaging type or do we have to act as though our entire product line is direct contact?
You can exempt sections and/or packaging types from the scope/audit.
Contact your CB for direction in doing so, before your first audit.
IME it became a real issue with the employees to have certified "sections" of our plant. If they are separated and in different buildings I could see doing so, but say you receive materials at the same point for the different types of products. The receiving areas and activities need to be covered as food contact, your final finishing areas (folder gluers) need to be covered if you process ANY covered products there. If the employees move from one not covered process to another covered one, do they know what is expected of them? Does it create the potential to omit necessary steps if the employees or supervisors miss that it is a covered product? These are not to mention your training. If you have to train everyone, new and existing, you risk them becoming confused when they have to follow certain instructions for one product and not for others. We found it more difficult to separate everything than it was to treat the whole plant as an SQF facility. We only have about 4 customers out of 200 or so that require a GFSI standard certification but there was more benefit for full conversion than against it. Just food for thought.