IFS certification

Hi, all,

I am a new company and want to import nuts into Netherlands. I am trying to budget for any certification needed and a bit confused about IFS certification.

If I import to the FSSC certified warehouse and then just sell to the EU B2B client - do I still need any of the IFS certificates ?

Or is it only for the manufacturers - if so, do I need to ask exporter to provide IFS cert if they are outside EU?

If yes - how does the audit takes place and on what states of import - port of arrival, warehouse etc?

Also there seems to be few types of certs:

IFS Logistics

IFS Brokerage

How long does it take and the costs involved (average) per year? I plan to ship 2x20 monthly.

Any advice highly appreciated, to understand the process, requirements and stages/costs.

Thanks.

Mari

IFS Broker is the relevant standard for you to look at - Logistics is for warehouse/transport companies.

The audit would be at your office, as it's interested in your systems, particularly relating to how you approve and manage your subcontractors.

Audit length and cost will depend on the complexity of your business, so I'd suggest talking to some certification bodies to get some quotes for that.

By 2x20, do you mean two 20' containers per month? If so, your systems won't need to be particularly big or complex, so once they are set up it should not take a large time commitment to manage them on an ongoing basis.

Dear pHruit,

Thanks for your reply.

However, if I am not presented in UK (no office) and just importing the goods there - there is no site to inspect.

Subcontractor would be a clearing agent and the warehouse only, and the warehouse has FSSC certification,

The question is do I have to obtain IFS in order to be able to sell imported cleared goods to EU buyer B2B? Or can I sell and certification is to be done by then for further EU transactions?

Thanks once again for your help.

There is no legal requirement for you to have IFS into the UK/EU, although if you're doing a lot of business in the UK, it is increasingly an expectation/mandatory requirement for some of the bigger potential customers here - there is a drive by the big retailers to have certification in place throughout every step of the supply chain. It's worth noting that if it is the UK market in which you're primarily interested, the preference would be for BRC Agents & Brokers rather than the IFS Broker standard. Looking at the current GFSI benchmark recognition (https://mygfsi.com/h...nt/recognition/) it appears that the BRC version is recognised, but IFS isn't. 

I guess the summary is: No it's not mandatory, but it may add value an either help retain customers, or open the door to new ones. I could be biased (I put BRC Agents & Brokers in during the first year it was available), but it seems to have been very well received by the UK market.

The "audit" will take place at wherever you are physically based, rather than the location in which your transactions/storage etc are happening. As these standards are for agents/brokers, they're not expecting to see an actual manufacturing/storage site - they won't do a physical inspection of the premises, but would instead review your food safety systems, records, do a traceability exercise or two etc, none of which require an actual manufacturing premises.

N.B. This may potentially be done as a remote audit, rather than sending an auditor to your location - I'm not sure of the approach for first certification audits now, as there has been some change due to the pandemic this year.

I'd still very much recommend talking to some potential certification bodies - they'll be able to confirm exactly what sort of audit they think would be required, how much it will cost, how they would like to do it etc.

Dear pHruit,

Thanks so much for your assistance. I did email a few certification bodies in NL, however nobody came back to me so far.

Any chance you could share a contact (if you dealt with any) of a real person, rather than going via info emails from their websites.

Thanks again.

We are a Nut company that is now selling routinely to UK and EU.  Our owner also found that the BRC certification was the most important thing to get. We will be having our third year Audit next week.

  I agree that having a certificate on your  "trading business" will be important. Last year in BRC issue 8 they added a whole section on that very subject. You can download the BRC standard for free on their site, but it is section 9 that I refer to.  The topics in the section are: Traded Food Products Supplier Approval, Specifications for Traded Food Products, Food Safety Legislation, Traceability. 

I would start with Traceability! Figure out how you will be dcumenting that.

Supplier Approval must include packaging clearances for the EU as well.

Hope this helps!