How much documentation is required for Supplier Approval?

Good morning. I recently started at a small pasta sauce, bbq sauce and dressing manufacturer that up until the end of 2019 had VERY rudimentary procedures, no Food Safety Manager, and basically no program to speak of, so we are still currently experiencing some growing pains. This will be my first experience with BRC (previous experience was all with SQF) and I have a question regarding Supplier Approval.  We use a handful of distributors that we get most of our individual ingredients from since the amounts we need are not large enough to be able to buy direct from the manufacturer. In terms of Supplier Approval, do I need to get all of our required documentation (Letter of Guarantee, GFSI certification or approved audit, HACCP, etc.)  from each manufacturer of each ingredient (thus relying on our distributors to reach out to each individual company and forwarding the documentation back to us), or as each of our distributors are all GFSI certified, have all of the documentation and programs that we require, etc. are we ok in just collecting their information, thus greatly diminishing the amount of information that I will need to collect.  I'm not sure how deep BRC requires us to go and wanted to see what the general consensus was before I dove into what could be a very lengthy and drawn out process (almost 200 individual ingredients).  

Fo starters, request for GFSI certification, HACCP , SAQ and possibly allergen management policy  for the distributor (which I think it will be a broker) . Then request the GFSI, SAQ, HACCP, Allergen Mgt policy etc , specifications and all other Factory supporting ( if ingredient requires some other certification for authenticity etc). I would think you will be looking to risk access your suppliers & ingredient for approval and also for future monitoring.  

Good morning. I recently started at a small pasta sauce, bbq sauce and dressing manufacturer that up until the end of 2019 had VERY rudimentary procedures, no Food Safety Manager, and basically no program to speak of, so we are still currently experiencing some growing pains.  This will be my first experience with BRC (previous experience was all with SQF) and I have a question regarding Supplier Approval.  We use a handful of distributors that we get most of our individual ingredients from since the amounts we need are not large enough to be able to buy direct from the manufacturer.  In terms of Supplier Approval, do I need to get all of our required documentation (Letter of Guarantee, GFSI certification or approved audit, HACCP, etc.)  from each manufacturer of each ingredient (thus relying on our distributors to reach out to each individual company and forwarding the documentation back to us), or as each of our distributors are all GFSI certified, have all of the documentation and programs that we require, etc. are we ok in just collecting their information, thus greatly diminishing the amount of information that I will need to collect.  I'm not sure how deep BRC requires us to go and wanted to see what the general consensus was before I dove into what could be a very lengthy and drawn out process (almost 200 individual ingredients).  

Hi aew,

I suggest you obtain a (free download) copy of the Standard which details the minimum requirements.

The BRC Interp.Guidelines are also a (not free) recommended acquisition.

For compliance with BRCV8, you really only need 3 things:

1. supplier approval

GSFI-recognised accreditation like BRC, IFS, etc is best; 1^st party audit is the next acceptable approval option; and finally low risk suppliers can be approved based on questionnaires.

1. raw material specification

The statement of intent for section 3.6 states that specifications shall exist for raw materials.

1.  raw material risk assessment

Your raw material risk assessment will need to result in certain outputs, such as the acceptance criteria for goods intake inspections, surveillance testing schedule, etc.