BRCGS Storage and Distribution

BRCGS‘ Global Standard for Storage and Distribution is the market-leading Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) logistics scheme. If you are a warehouse company, distributor or transport operator, service quality and product safety will be your number one priority.

It provides a single Standard and protocol that governs an accredited audit by third party certification bodies, allowing a credible independent assessment of a company’s product safety and quality systems. It is comprehensive in scope (quality, legality, product safety, security and authenticity) and includes a straightforward certification process as well as a range of audit options, including announced, unannounced and blended audit programmes (partly remote/partly on-site).

The standard can accommodate multi-site operators including head office operations, hub, satellite and remote cross-docking operations. Certified companies will be listed on the BRCGS Directory.

The Standard:

• is specifically designed for logistics operations dealing with food, packaging, and consumer products, such as body care products, catering consumables and electrical goods.
• is easy to understand, uses prescriptive language, and is applicable for global application. It is fully flexible as organizations can implement the full scope, or a scope relevant to their operation e.g. storage only, distribution only, transport only.
• applies mostly to transport of packaged products, but certain unpackaged products can be included, such as open trays of fruit and vegetables, open trays of crustaceans and hanging meat carcasses. No processing is permitted, but some trimming of fruit and vegetables is permitted for appearance purposes.
• has global recognition by customers and the flexible nature of the standard with additional modules reduce the audit burden.
• provides a framework to manage product safety, integrity, legality and quality, and the operational controls for these criteria in the food industry supply chain industries.

• All logistic companies in the food, packaging and consumer products supply chain
• Companies that store, distribute and trade in foods, packaging and consumer products
• Ambient and temperature controlled operators
• Companies that provide storage and distribution, storage only, distribution only or transport only
• It can be applied at any point in the distribution chain from primary preparation to retail.
• Companies which offer additional products such as wholesaling, e-commerce, and services such as cross-docking, contract packing, waste handling, container washing and product inspection.

The Standard is divided into 9 sections:

• Senior Management Commitment
• Hazard and Risk Analysis
• Product Safety and Quality Management System
• Site and Building Standards
• Vehicle Operating Standards
• Facility Management
• Good Operating Practices
• Personnel
• Handling of Open Food Products

The following modules can be added:

Wholesale module, Cross docking module, E commerce module, Contracted services, Contractual arrangements (all services), Product inspection, Contract packing (repacking/assembly packing), Quantity control inspection, Contract chilling/freezing/tempering/defrosting and High Pressure Processing (HPP), Contract cleaning of baskets, roll cages and other distribution containers, Waste recovery and recycling

There are several audit options:

• Announced
• Unannounced (note that it is a GFSI requirement that every three years, there is at least one unannounced audit)
• Blended (a two part remote and on-site audit)

Audit duration is a minimum of 8 hours but can be up to 24 hours for large sites or where additional modules are included. The audit aims to give a true picture of the degree of conformity of the operating site. Any non-conformities will have to be corrected within 28 days. The outcome and grading of the audit is determined by the number and level of non-conformities. The certification period is either 12 months or if a defined number of non-conformities has been found, the next audit will take place in six months.

Quality Austria – Trainings, Zertifizierungs und Begutachtungs GmbH is accredited by Accreditation Austria in accordance with ÖNORM EN ISO/TS 17065 for certifications on the basis of the BRCGS since February 2006 and is therefore approved as an Austrian certification body by BRCGS.

BRCGS Standards (Packaging Materials, Food, START!, Gluten-Free and CoC through BRCGS)

• BRCGS Storage and Distribution - pdf (228 KB)