How I am supposed to get certified before I start production if I can't sell without being certified!

I work as the food safety and quality supervisor in a Canadian bakery facility. we have a branch in the US that is finished construction and should go into production.

our problem is we have very big contracts with buyers that like the products but they want us to be BRC certified otherwise they will never buy the product. problem is we are only producing samples and freezing them so we basically produce maybe 1 day per month.

now how I am supposed to get certified before I start production if I can't sell without being certified!!!

anyone can think of any solution to that. the owner says he cant produce just for the sake of getting certified and storing the product it costs too much and he cant produce unless he can sell it.

Interestingly on the surface.

Do you have the contract to buy, as in signed and an actual commitment or is this promisory to purchase?

Any way, about five years ago we had an owner call us and said basically the same thing for SQF.

Our answer was they needed to contact their buyers and tell them it is not possible to get certified pre-production, if you are working with a consultant to develope your BRC system have the consultant write a letter that can be distributed to your buyers/customers detailing their involvement with you, what they are doing, what is expected of your company, timelines,etc.

It was actually our letter to potential buyers for a new company/building that had orders coming in pre-certification, they were smaller testing orders - but it provided the production the company needed to go thru implementation shake out and get certified SQF.

The letter is the assurance that you are working towards certification and have actually shelled out the money for a consultant to help.

And frankly, if that does not work, your owner needs to step up to the plate and make an investment in part time production at least - I am sure there is some kind of outlet for your product, even if it is the local food bank, small stores, own retail, etc.

My question to your owner is, what does not gettting certified mean?

the specifics of the situation are hard to explain and i am not sure that he would want to divulge them but in short he really can't produce there unless he sells it immedeatly.

the contracts are midway through as in we are registered and ready to go all the retailer branches know what they want and we are on their system where the retailer branches would just punch in the PO but we are not activated because we are missing the certificate that needs to be uploaded to the system. 

i believe he said he talked to them and they refused the solution of buy first certifacte later but i dont think he had a letter from a consultant.

the thing is i am not the quality supervisor of both facilities technically i am only responsible for Canadian facility but the guy in the US is very fresh so i am helping him out. they hired a consultant about a week ago so i will bring up the idea of the letter and we will see how it goes.

thanks for your help.

Just to back up Glenn's post, which I fully agree with - I've encountered a somewhat similar challenge previously and there isn't really any way around the need to start producing before having something that auditors can actually assess to certify.

Hopefully the commitment demonstrated by having the consultants letter will be sufficient.

If you and/or your colleague at the US facility are able to make direct contact with technical/QA people at the customer without stepping on anyone's toes (commercial people can be very sensitive about such things ;) ) to talk it through then that can potentially go a long way towards helping, as they're presumably the ones giving the sign-off on whether to approve, and will hopefully be able to properly understand the nature of the situation.