4 replies to this topic

[ElsaSD]

Hello all,

 

Happy New Year!

 

Hope someone can help me with the below.

 

My company trades Essential Oils and other products and we are BRCGS Agents and Brokers certified.

I'm in the process of approving a supplier that will decant our essential oils.

The supplier has no GFSI certification but has an ISO 9001: 2015 and ISO 14001:2015 certifications.

 

Will we have problems during a BRC audit if we approve this supplier?

 

Thank you in advance.

 

Kind regards,

Elsa

[olenazh]

Hi Elsa. Not sure about BRC, but with FSSC there's no problem to have a supplier without GFSI certification. I'm just sending them a questionnaire to assess their food safety system.

[ElsaSD]

Hi Olenazh, thank you so much!

[pHruit]

The standard doesn't specifically mandate that suppliers and service providers have to be certified to BRC or other GFSI standard, so you have some scope to approach this to suit your business.

As with pretty much everything BRC, a risk-based approach is required, so you'll have to demonstrate to the auditor that your approval approach is commensurate with the level of risk for the activities the packer provides to you. I've done plenty of BRC audits with some proportion of our suppliers being non-GFSI, so it is certainly possible, but you should probably expect a greater level of scrutiny of these - particularly so if this is your only supplier who is providing this type of service.

As a supplier they're probably a strong candidate for you to audit yourselves, conduct a trace exercise etc.
 

[ElsaSD]

Hi pHruit,  Thank you so much for your reply and for the helpful advice