5 replies to this topic

[CarolineS22]

I work for a food manufacturing facility. We have recently decided to lease a warehouse to store finished goods and raw materials at. Management and SQF Practitioner all work on site at the manufacturing facility, but we will hire and train employees to work at the offsite warehouse and complete occasional visits and internal audits. The issue is that the warehouse will be 2 hours away from the food manufacturing facility. Can I certify the site under my current SQF food manufacturing code, or will I need to pursue a separate warehouse SQF certificate? How would I handle audits when the 2 sites are 2 hours away from each other? Would I need a separate SQF Practitioner for the warehouse?

[SQFconsultant]

You'll need a separate certification -  for storage and distribution.

 

You can use the same SQF Practitioner from your facility as the main Practitioner but will still need someone at the storage facility (a backup SQF Practitioner.)

 

You need a back-up there regardless - While I have had clients that do this, considering it is 2 hours away and not just down the road, I would suggest having a key Practitioner at that site as well - You will have to have a back-up anyway, so might as well go ahead and designate another Practitioner there.

 

Frankly one location is enough, 2 can be grueling.

 

https://www.sqfi.com...nd-distribution

[Tony-C]

Hi Caroline,

 

 

Welcome to the IFSQN forums.

 

Although I agree with some points made by Glenn and because of the distance it would seem that a separate certification is necessary, this is not in actual fact what is in the SQF Code which says a site can be expanded to include other premises.

 

This topic has been discussed previously (see below) and I suggest that you contact your certification body to clarify as a you might find yourself saving a lot of time and money.

 

See post by jfrey123 in this topic: Offsite Warehouse - SQF scope

 

The scope of certification specifies:

‘The site…...’

‘If activities are carried out in different premises but are overseen by the same senior, operational, and technical management and are covered by the one SQF System, the site can be expanded to include those premises.’

 

Kind regards,

 

Tony

[SQFconsultant]

It would if it was similar -  thus a food MFG that has 2 similar plants - one packing tuna and the other processing fish, etc would be similar and could be handled under the one cert - however having spoken with SQFI when you have a dis-similar facility that is under a separate Code it would not apply and it would be a sep cert under in this case a storage an distribution code.

 

Must be a grey area of SQF - I might want to call them again and ask for a re-do on the question an see if they indicate the same.

 

Thanks Tony, you keep me on my toes.

[CarolineS22]

This is very helpful information. We do have some storage and warehousing at our site- it is just not enough. Also, after discussing with my team, the warehouse might be closer to 1 or 1.5 hours away. It would be very helpful if I could group it under my current SQF certification. Would SQF allow for a different 3rd party certification as long as it meets all requirements, or an SQF cert would be required?

[jfrey123]

Thanks for the shout out to an old post Tony!  The last time I came across this situation was when I was consulting for a different spice company, and they had a storage site about 3 miles away from their processing site.  Both ended up certified under their main food manufacturing certificate, listing the separate addresses.  Food manufacturing covers storage/shipping/receiving practices, so the fact you're only storing and not manufacturing at the separate site becomes irrelevant, IMO.  The case for keeping them on the same cert is strengthened if the same management personnel oversee the second site, and if it operates under the same SOP's and FSQMS as the original site.

 

Now, if for any legal reasons your owners decide to operate the building as a separate facility under a different LLC or something, I can make the case then that it should be a separate cert.  To overshare another example: My current corp operates 8 FDA fruit and veg plants, 2 USDA meat facilities, and 1 mixed facility with some USDA monitored processes; all are under separate LLC's and treated as individuals for legal reasons.  Even with that, our SQF certifying body is encouraging us to enroll the FDA sites into the multi-site certificate under SQF which would basically change to one long desk audit paired with shorter 1-day visits to each site to certify us as an entire company.

 

All of that said, I would run it by your certifying body and see if they confirm it can be added to existing cert.  You must tell them about the new storage regardless, and they're going to need to schedule an audit of that building before you use it anyway, so they'll clarify whether it gets added to the existing cert or listed as a totally separate operation.