4 replies to this topic

[Sphadnis]

Hi all,

 

I am at a mid-sized brewery in the United States. I was wondering if anyone who is SQF and/or Organic certified knew or could estimate how much the cost typically is for maintaining each certification per year? I have looked this up online, but the answers are a little bit all over the place. Are the costs per year typically the same as the cost to initially obtain the certification? 

 

Thank you!

[Spidey]

When I was looking for a Certifying Body for my company's SQF certification, I narrowed our search down to three potential CBs.  I interviewed them and requested quotes.  There were HUGE cost differences between them.  One of them was more than twice as expensive as the other two and had extra days for the audit that the other two didn't have, just because it was the CBs policy to add extra days to everything.

 

I think trying to find a general cost range is not easy because every company has different needs and every CB has different costs.  You may need to make a list of potential CBs and contact them.  Additionally, we have different CBs for our Organic Certification and SQF Certification; however, I believe there are some CBs who certify both standards.

 

As for year to year cost for attaining and maintaining certification, those have been pretty similar for my company for the three SQF audits that we've had.  The fluctuations were due to the variable costs of airfare, hotels, and rental cars.  I believe this also holds true for our Organic Certification, I'm not as involved in the cost side of that certification.

[Brendan Triplett]

Hey Sphadnis,

 

Couple of different past forum entries on this as it tends to pop up every now and again.  I have attached few for your review:

 

Cost of hiring someone to write SQF Food Safety Management System? - IFSQN

 

SQF Storage & Distribution certification estimated costs - IFSQN

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers!

[kingstudruler1]

You realy do need to get a quote.    Some companies do things very different  like how much they charge you for "days of travel".   I want to say a typical two day audit has been costing me at 5- 7k.  similar to the links.   

I have found that if you can use a state usda as a certification body for organic certification it is more economical than one of the better known certification body.   and actually easier to work with.    

 

If you are looking for the cost doing everything extra to achieve and maintain SQF or organic that is hard to determine as all facilities are so different and how developed your programs are.  

[MDaleDDF]

There is a lot of little things too, depending on your company.   Will you need a consultant, or do you plan to do it all yourself?  Consultants aren't super expensive, nor are they cheap, but for a smaller company they can be 100% needed to get the job done.   Also, things like software needs came come into play depending on what you do, which is pricey, but for us absolutely necessary to maintain everything needed for our cert.   Not to mention the cost of doing business can go up, again depending on what you do, as it takes employees longer to do tasks, more tasks will be added to standard operating procedures if you aren't doing them to the suitability of standards now, staff to be properly trained, etc.   All these things add up to more than just what the registrar is going to cost you.