3 replies to this topic

[TJElliott]

We are an ice cream manufacture with a distribution center 10 miles away. We just built another manufacturing facility attached to our distribution center.

 

We are SQF certified under the FSC 10: dairy food processing for our original manufacturing facility. Would the second facility be FSC 10: Dairy Food Processing with distribution of our product falling under that sector or would I need to add FSC 26: Storage and Distribution to the audit request?

 

The buildings are now under one roof so I feel manufacturing trumps distribution on the code sector scale. 

[jfrey123]

Was the distribution center listed under your original manufacturing SQF scope? 

 

So long as the newly added manufacturing center connected to the distribution is all under the same business name and operational hierarchy, I agree that entire facility is now a manufacturing facility with a storage/shipping space attached.  I think you can go for multi-site by amending the scope of your original manufacturing facility, or you can have the second building audited independently (just making sure you list each building as the other's co-packer in that scenario).

[TJElliott]

The Distribution center was never audited under the SQF scheme. They only had a GMP independent audit. This will be the first SQF audit at that site so I feel it is encompassed by the manufacturing scope but want to make sure. 

[SQFconsultant]

It can go one of two ways - it would depend on size of your DC and percentage of business or flow-thru, also is there anything moving thru the DC that is contracted out - either flow-through no touch, no breakdown etc or are other.

 

I assume the DC was included in your SQF audit on the facility 10 miles away?

 

Considering that food storage is a separate certification and not just an add-on it is possible your CB/SQFI will see it was either just an inclusion as a multi-site (without the side certification for the DC).

 

However, all things considered I'd be asking for a multi-site and it can be included in current cert instead of making another certification.

 

We had a similar situation about 7 years ago and we almost had to make the food storage facility that was attached to the processing facility a separate certification, but I called into SQFI and they asked for the percentage of the size and volume for the processing as compared to the DC and said that if it were 5!% or more that it would be another certification --- truthfully it was close and it came down to 45% and thus it qualified as being 1 cert under food processing only.