Name: Understanding the BRCGS Storage and Distribution Implementation
Uploaded: 2025-06-25T17:30:10.048Z
Duration: 1 h 30 min 4 s
Description: Understanding the BRCGS Storage and Distribution Implementation

Transcript for "Understanding the BRCGS Storage and Distribution Implementation": Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's NSF webinar on BRCGS storage and distribution, key impacts and changes for the industry. You'll be able to submit questions for the q and a session at the end of today's webinar using the q and a function on your console. Today's presenters are Versay Sanchez from BRCGS, then Emily Varnan from NSF. Today's agenda includes an introduction to NSF, an overview of the storage and distribution industry, compliance requirements, benefits of certification, and audit protocol and expectations, and then a q and a. I'll now hand it over to our first presenter, Emily. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Emily with NSF. I've been with NSF since 02/2018, first as an auditor, and now as a technical scheme lead for all of the BRCGS programs within NSF globally, as well as for California proposition 12. Before that, I've been in the food industry in different roles as quality manager, food safety, operations, plant manager, etcetera. NSF is an independent, not for profit organization with a mission to protect environmental and public health. Regulators, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers look to NSF to to facilitate the development of public health standards and to provide services that help improve food, water, and health products. How do we improve human and planet health? Well, through standards, by developing standards, helping to promote the quality of food of food, drinking water, air, dietary supplements, etcetera. We also conduct testing where we have labs that analyze products against internal and external standards. We are a certification body. We certify products as well as food safety certification programs for c f GFSI through auditing. So we have auditing against, of course, GFSI programs including SQF, FSSC, IFS, BRCGS. We also have a consulting group and a training group. NSF has a global footprint. We are serve serving over 35,000 clients in a 180 countries. We have 45 plus offices, and laboratories. As you can see from the map, we are across all continents. For food and beverage, we go from farm to fork. We offer auditing, certification, product testing, as well as consulting and training services across the global food supply chain. Our solution areas include agriculture, aquaculture, and fisheries. We conduct global gap audits. We have food packaging, food retail and grocery, organic and specialty foods, of course, storage and distribution, commercial food equipment, food manufacturing and processing, food service, hospitality, and restaurants. On the slide, you'll see many of the customers and clients that we work with. As you can see, these include global retail and food service companies. Again, we have Farm and Fork Services. Our NSF global food team provides expertise, training, and accredited services throughout the supply chain, including agriculture, animal feed, and welfare, produce, processing, distribution, dairy seafood, including quality management software, as well as retail and restaurants. We are well rounded and have well rounded solutions across the entire food supply chain. Again, you can see our product categories on this list. We have points of inspection for raw material inspection, and initial production checks during production inspections and preshipment inspections. How can NSF support your organization? NSF has pioneered food safety for nearly eighty years. We just had our eighty year anniversary last year. We can support your food business in many ways. Whether your focus is food safety, improving consistency, or raising standards, we have offices and expertise worldwide. So wherever you do business, we're here for you. Whether it's GFSI, second party audits, supplier assurance, training for food safety, food defense, supply chain assurance and our software traction, regulatory compliance, risk and gap assessments, and food product claims such as gluten free, non GMO, plant based, and with rage without antibiotics. And just recently, we have also added California Prop 12. Our certification programs, include all of the major ones, agents and brokers, food safety, storage and distribution, and we are adding consumer products by 2026. Of course, our BRCGS packaging materials global standard, for issue seven is benchmarked as well as our BRCGS issue nine food safety through BRCGS. Thank you. And I'll now turn it over to Marce. Thank you, Emily. Hello, and welcome to the the strategy solution webinar training. My name is Merce. I would like to thank NSF, for the invitation to give this introduction to the BRCGS global standard for storage and distribution. I look forward to working with Emily from NSF to give you a broad understanding of what the standard requirements are. The agenda of today includes the introduction of BRCGS and the storage and distribution standard. The standard, the scope of the standard, the requirements, the top nonconformities, the audit protocol, and questions. The why BRCGS? Well, ensuring product integrity through the most through this global certification programs is really important. We have more than twenty five years of history accepted and specified by more global brand owners that only, that any other scheme. We were the first to introduce the food safety culture, food fraud assessment, and blended and remote added solutions, and we have a global network to delivery partners and supporting professionals. We have 10 core schemes with more than 35,000 certificates in more than 130 countries with, more than 2,500 auditors and around 385 approved partners. The BRCGS provides solutions through a large suite of BRCGS standards. From the left to the right, we have, food safety, agents and brokers, consumer products, packaging materials, storage and distribution. BFCG as food safety start as entry level standard, gluten free, plant based, and also ethical, standard. We will be focusing on the strategic distribution standard in this training session. The strategic distribution standard is now in its fourth issue and was published in November 2020. As you can see here on this slide, we currently have around 2,700, certificated sites across 52 countries. Our year on year growth is over 10%, and we have, 420 auditors approved to audit against the standard. And our top three certificate countries are United Kingdom, United States Of America, and The Netherlands. Here are some of the aims and benefits of the standard. The aim of the standard is to specify safety quality and operational criteria required to be in place within a within an organization to fulfill obligations with regards to legal compliance and protection of the consumer. And what are the benefits having a standard like this in place? Brand owners are focused on product integrity more than ever before. At BRCGS, we set the the benchmark for best practice, helping to provide reassurance that the products and services are highly quality, legal, and safe. The sector is faced with many issues that can affect production safety and quality during the storage and distribution throughout the supply chain. The global storage market is forecast to grow by 6% by 02/2023. The global distribution market is forecast to grow to, 800 billions over the same time period. However, this is likely to be a consecutive estimate estimated gift to recent spec in ecommerce. Here are here are a few examples of the benefits which can take note of. I won't go through them in details as we have a lot of slides to get through through today. Then they are protect the company reputation, brand, and image, address consumer assurance demands, and demonstrate industry best practice with encouraging the development of product safe culture, reduction in risk and potential liability associated with the storage and distribution, increase market access to the market share, entry barrier removed, regulatory compliance and reduced cost and failure, involvement business, improvements to the continual investments by enhancing root cause analysis and internal audit requirements as well as access to the BRCGS service package, and compliance with the standard that is in language GSI 2,020 requirements and accredited ISO IAC 17,065. Integrity is the bedrock of your CGS certification. It's fundamental in delivering results that brand owners can trust. As supply chain globalize more and more, integrity is a key to ensuring BRCGS certification continues to play a vital role in consumer protection. We do this by using an integrity program comprised of five layers. Delivery partners' performance. The certification bodies who works with us go through the robust approval process, including offices' assessments, partner offices' assessments, and KPIs' best performance review every six months with a publicly available start rating. Aurizon is an analytical tool providing supply chain intelligence through the dashboards, reports, and benchmarking data, help improve site and supplier performance. Tell me your CGS. It's a confidential reporting system used to capture any disease dissatisfaction with an audit process that could impact areas of compliance. Integrity audits. An internal team of auditors conduct unannounced visits at certified sites or witness audits of auditors to safeguard integrity of certification. And the last but not yet the less important, auditor compliance. Companies requirements for auditors registration, including training, informal auditing, hazard qualification, the right experience of products and associated technologies, and complementation of BRCGS mandatory courses. Moving on to the statistics and position of statement updates, we need to understand the scope of the standard. Next into the format of the standard, it should be know that the protocol and appendices from approximately 50% of the content of the standard. So it's important that you are familiar with these areas. The standard is divided in five parts, as you can see here. Part one, introduction, provides the background to the standard and an overview of the scheme. It also defines the scope and types of products and operations which might be certified against the standard. Part two, requirements. Detels the requirements of the standard with which a company and site must comply in order to gain certification. Part three, audit protocol. Provides information on the certification and auditing process, including how to select the certification body, the post audit requirements, and description of the BRCGS directory. Part five, management and governance, describes the management and governance systems in place for the standard and certification body requirements. Then we have the appendices. We have set the one to seven provided appendices that provides additional useful information, including details of other BRCGS, competency requirements for auditors, certification a certificate template, a list of products included within the scope of the standard, crosstalk annex, a glossary of the terms, and a list of acknowledgments. It's really important to take care about all the sections and especially about the glossary of terms for sure, because BRCGS has his own glossary of terms that could be different about what we, the sites, understand. When we talk about the scope of the standard, the BRCGS, the storage and distribution, we need to understand the place to any point of the distribution chain from primary production to retail. It can be flexible applied to cover distribution only, where sites directly manage distribution staff, a general drivers, and some or all of the distribution vehicles. This includes serving and repairs of vehicles. Transport only. Same as distribution, but the loading and or or loading of the vehicles is carried out by customer and not distribution company. Storage only. For storage facilities which are under the control of the site. This means that the staff and management systems are directly managed by the site. You have control of the conditions of the building and can control the service requirements. Chemical pest control, storage and distribution, and also additional voluntary models where set choose to include these on the audit scope. The standard only applies to the storage and distribution of the following products. We talk about food, frozen, chilled, and ambiance, packaged food products, food products and ingredients stored and distributed in bulk by road only, loose food products, open boxes and trays of fruit and vegetables, dry trays of fried fish, crustacean, or other seafood, and carcasses of meat. Also, packaging material, that includes packaging design designated for food and then food use, and also prepackaged and food prepackaged and bulk packaging materials for later con conversion to food and non food. Applies only storage and distribution operations and not to any process to convert intermediate materials into final packaging material. Consumer products. Prepacket products manufactured for the consumer market to be sold by retail or similar products sold to the food service industry. Examples includes general merchandise, personal care, and and household products. More details can be found in the consumer products standard, which can be freely downloaded from the BRCGS store. Products excluded from the scope of the standard are live animal, except crustaceans, falls, full salt in bulk or, refillable containers, and motor vehicles. Voluntary exclusions. It is expected that wherever possible that full scope of site's activities is covered by the altitude scope, this shows the clear commitment for the site management to adopt the best practice principles or dinette in the standard. Where exclusions are agreed with the certification body responsible for the audit, this must be must follow certain requirements. To exclude products category, the following will must apply. The excluded product categories can be clearly differentiated from the product category categories within the scope, and the excluded products are stored in physically segregated area. Moving on to studies moving on to the requirements. Excuse me. The requirements of the storage and distribution standard are broken down into 19 secondtions. There are the first nine are compulsory with some exclusion allowed. The other up to 19 are voluntary. The first three are the key principles with later section focusing on the most specific requirements for different parts of the operations. Section one addresses senior management commitment. Section two, hazard and risk analysis, section four, product safety and quality management system. Meanwhile, section four, site and building standards, five, vehicle operations standards, Six, facility management. Seven, go to pending operating practices. Eight, personal. Nine, handling open product open food products. And then section 10 to 19, that they are the voluntary modules covered briefly in the next slide. When we talk about senior management commitment, we need to take in consideration the quality policy statement plan and the plan for continuing, the improvement of, product safety and quality culture, resources. Give me one second. Resources, objectives, product safety, quality and legality, confidential reporting system, management review, and the organizational structure, including responsibilities and management, authority. Section two, meanwhile, covers the hazard and risk analysis. Here, we need to take in consideration the prerequisites programs as essential to establish the foundation of the system, the the the hazard, management, the hazard and risk analysis system, the multidisciplinary team with a team leader, the HADA or HASA study, the scope, the product flow, the hazard analysis and risk assessment, the identification and monitoring of the critical control points, if they are, and the review of the system. Related with the product safety and quality management system, there are established elements about the product safety and quality system, documentation control that records completion and maintenance, internal audits, corrective and preventive actions, customer contractual agreements, purchasing, service suppliers and subcontractors, product labeling, and, excuse me, product fraud risk management and traceability among others. Section four, we talk about location, perimeter, and grounds, site security, and product defense, layout, product flow and supervision, fabrication, and the staff facilities. Section five, we take in consideration vehicle standards, vehicle and load security, the vehicle's management, and the vehicle's temperature control if that is applicable. For section six, we talk about equipment, maintenance, calibration and control of measuring and monitoring devices, housekeeping and engine, waste and waste disposal, and pest management, among others. For section seven, we talk about receipt of goods, product handling, environmental control, physical and chemical product contamination, stock rotation, product and release product release and management of urgents. Meanwhile, section eight, we talk about personnel, training and competency, and personal agent. And section nine, we talk about handling of open food products. And here again, we request requirements against hazard or risk analysis, staff facilities, fabrication, maintenance, housekeeping, and protective clothing more related with the handling of these open food products. There are, as we explained it, 10 voluntary sections of the standard. If you exclude any of the sections from the lithoscope, you will still be able to use the Versigy as lower. This is important to remind that you don't need to add if you don't want the on the scope. Then in the sections from 10 to 19, we talk about wholesale, cross docking, ecommerce for section 12, contract contractual arrangements or services. Then here we talk about 14 product inspection, 15 contract packet contract packing, 16, quantity control inspection. 17, contract chilling, freezing, tempering, or defrosting, and high pressure operations. Section 18, contract cleaning of baskets, raw cages, and other distribution containers, and 19, waste recover and recycling. During the lifetime of the public of of a which is the standard, the BRCGS technical advice committee may be asked to review the wording of a clause or provide an interpretation of a requirement or a detail of the protocol. The decision made by the tech is now a supposition statement. Position statements are willing and are considered to be an extension of the standard. Companies need to be aware of any statements relating to the standard and, when necessary, ensure that the information is transferred into action. Position statements are published here and on a participate. You can find out when a new assignment has been published by syncing up to BRCGS newsletter. Then here you have the the the situation. There is a position statement, the name SD404, that it's quite relevant. Please, if you have not, just download on the website. Moving to the top nonconformities, this is the, review from 2023 to 02/2024, October September 2024. We can see difference between announced set and unannounced set audits. There is a slight variations, of the top five nonconformities, but on the wall, they are very similar. This information is useful in knowing what type of nonconformities has been raised and, hopefully, give you areas of focus to ensure your sites don't make the same mistakes. Then, for example, we have buildings, pest proofed as top one. Permisses are clean and hygienic condition. For top two, walls, floors, ceilings, pipe work, maintain it in good conditions. Third position, a shadow led program of internal audits on the fourth position, and then storage of the chemicals as five. As you can see, as an announced set, they are, as we, as you get, the top three are almost the same. Only top two and top, one from announce it out, it's are split. And then we are also included or identified the procedures of handling glass under, the top four, position for an announced outage. Then we'll replace the storage of chemicals for the procedures of handling glass as different from the announced unannounced audits. Against the audit protocol, you can find the information on the, BRCGS Website under all standard search and distribution and help and guidance. The standard is available in different languages, English, Chinese, Italian, and Spanish. And, also, you can find resources available as the self assessment checklist, the interpretation guidance, the relevant position statements, the frequently asked questions, the guide of the certification, and the audit duration calculator under the this, section help and guidance. It's important when you are, thinking to be certified under BRCGS Strategy and distribution to be prepared, then you need to prepare the audit. In this case, you need to select the audit option, announced it or unannounced it with or without additional modules, conduct the self assessment compliance with the standard, select the certification body, and define the scope of the audit. You can choose different options, announced or unannounced audit program. Announced has two audit options. Option one, full audit, then mandatory one in three, unannounced, and option two, blended part, audit. The also, the unannounced it, audit program have a full option one audit, full audit, documentation, and factory, or option two, part one, unannounced audit, sites and vehicles, and part two, announced as a documentation part. We will cover the unannounced audit in more detail in the few next slides. When we talk about the planning the audit, it's really relevant to ensure the information and appropriate personnel are available for the audit, even if the audit isn't announced. Provide information to certification body for audit preparation and define the audit date or parameters parameters if it's an announcement, and agree audit duration based on the audit duration calculator. The on-site audit includes several stages that note there is no requirement for the audit to carry out the audit in the order listed above, But the audit must include all applicable elements then. Start with an opening meeting, and then there is an inspection of site, storage facilities, where applicable, a document review, accessibility exercise and check of associated records and documentation, and a vehicle audit, where applicable. Then there is a final review of findings by auditor and the closing meeting with the review of the audit findings and confirm any of the nonconformities if that is detected. The nonconformities and corrective actions, it's important that the site shall conduct the corrective action and preventive, and provide evidence for any nonconformity identified within twenty eight calendar days since the last day of the audit or ninety days for an initial audit or revisit depending of the number and nature of the audits. Also, it's important that the certification body should review the evidences in fourteen days. And if corrective action demanded damage satisfactory, certificate, audit report, and corresponding rate issued within forty two calendar days of the audit date. One hundred and four days for initial audits. When we talk about dealing with the nonconformity, it's important to make clear that this is stated under the part three, section two for two, procedures for handling nonconformities and corrective actions from the standard. Where the site has received an unconformity, the following stages must be completed by the site. First, can undertake the corrective action to remedy the immediate issue. Secondly, undertake the analysis of the underlying cause of the nonconformity, root cause. The standard does not specify which technique is used for root cause analysis, But techniques include the five y the five y's, the fishbone diagram, cause and effect, or Pareto's principle. You can use whatever you consider. There is not one or another. You can choose the the the technique that fits better with you. But feel, you must warranty that the root cause analysis is well conducted and identified the root cause of the nonconformity. Then after the root cause, analysis, the third and the last action is develop a preventive action plan to address the root cause and prevent the recurrence. Evidence generally needs to be submitted to the certification body within twenty eight days from the date of the audit. After the audit, there is the post audit that is then going maintenance of the standard and continual improvement. Get loading got login details for the BRCGS directory and share audit report with any required customer. Use of the BRCGS logo, it's important. There is a brand guideline related with the BRCGS logo, when and how can we use it. It's under the BRCGS website. Please, if you have not, let us know, and we will share the the the the links. Then go in communication with the certification body and reschedule the, schedule the re audit date before re audit due date. It's responsibility for both the cert and the certification body to conduct the audit before the re audit due date. It's important to understand that when you are certified, you have a service package. This service package have five elements really, really relevant, and you can use all of them. We are talking about the BRCGS participate that it's, provides free access to an extensive technical document library. You have access also to the BRCGS that insights into your audit performance and helps you to conduct the continual improvement review and how are you doing. You can also have access to the food safety culture excellence basic tool that, start measuring your culture and performance and helps you to implement the food safety culture plan. Also, the BRCGS ethical appraisal tool that free access to the essential guidelines and risk management for the ethical appraisal tool. And then the BRCGS professional that provides an holistic learning and development to drive your business forward. And it's available for all the sites certified under BRCGS storage and distribution. Thank you so much. I I explained it. All these, If you have any question, I would be glad to answer. Thank you. Well, thank you to both of our presenters for all of that information. We do have some questions come in, and they're generally aligned around categories of alignment and readiness and nonconformities. So, either of you can answer these as you see that. Jump in when you want to. The first one is sort of when we're looking at the storage and distribution standard, how does that how does the standard help businesses align with global regulatory or consumer expectations? Any notes there? Yes. The the the standard if, Emily, do you want to answer also? The standard, it's one of the most important things. Mercede, I'll go ahead and so standard is, GFSI benchmarked. Okay. So GFSI set out their benchmark standards, for good or, best practices in the supply chain. So it is benchmarked against that, which is a review or a combination of all of the, information that is out there in terms of food safety, storage and distribution in terms of food safety, throughout their working groups. So it should be aligned with most of your clients, as most of them do require GFSI benchmark program. As for and the industry itself, I think that, you know, this is not something new. It's been around for, you know, since '19 you know, late nineteen nineties, 1998. They started working on some of these programs. And then again in early two thousand, the first food program came out to be our CGS. So as it's grown over the last twenty years, the best practices have been pulled forward and incorporated into both the GFSI benchmark, requirements as well as BRCGS standards. That answers that. Yep. That's great. Thank you. When it comes to conversations about implementation and readiness, can either of you say a little bit more about perhaps, the most critical steps preparing for this type of audit, especially if you were a first time applicant? There is a new, program that BRCGS put out, for implementing, getting started. I think it's important to take a look at all of the information that's available first as you're, looking to build your program. You don't necessarily need to incorporate a consultant, but there's a lot of, tools that BRCGS has already put forward to assist sites in implementing their programs. There are also pre assessments. So at NSF, we can conduct a pre assessment prior to your first initial audit, which is basically a gap analysis audit for you. What the auditor would come in and do is audit you as if you were being audited for certification and find where your nonconformances are, provide you with those nonconformances so that you can work on those, prior to your certification audit. And it also, of course, tells you where you're already doing well because it's both a conformity and a nonconformity audit. That's great. Thank you. I and I think you may have answered some of the next question piece, which was talking a little bit about the nonconformity section. If that we were asked if there were ways that a company could strengthen their internal audit and root cause analysis processes to repeat nonconformities. Is that similar to your prior answer, or are there additional resources they might wanna take? Or do you have recommendations? Yes. Actually, NSF has training on corrective actions and how to perform root cause analysis. There's a lot of training that's available to NSF. And when it comes to, internal auditing and, working on your corrective actions, I think the biggest thing as an auditor that I've seen across both food and storage and distribution, which I audited, is that internal audits are and corrective actions are taken as something that just needs to get done to be certified. Well, yes, you have a do you have a time limit? But if you're not doing it correctly, if you're not doing it to really solve the issue or using it as a tool for improvement, you're doing your company a disservice. You are just going to end up repeating the problems. So the biggest thing when it comes to internal auditing, again, is looking at it from the auditor's standpoint. So if you have the ability to go sit in on other sites, audit during their BRCGS audit, you might have a client into our customer who has one who might be willing to allow you to do that, even though it's not necessarily a storage and distribution. If you need it's a food audit, it you'll gain quite a bit of insight on how, the audit is performed and the kinds of documents and things that an auditor is going to look at and apply that to your organization. The other part is the there is a, interpretation guideline, and a lot of companies don't utilize that to the where they where they can. You do have to purchase it from BRCGS. NSF cannot give you any of those. But it does give you the insight as to what the working groups, when they put together the standards, were thinking. We do not audit to the interpretation guideline, but it provides you with a lot of resources on, what is expected in the industry overall. So utilizing the resources that you have out there and taking it seriously in terms of conducting your internal audits, doing the deep dive as you can, being the devil's advocate, taking the time to do sections. Don't try to do it all at one time because then it just becomes a chore. Break it up into groups. And having, providing the training to some other personnel in your organization who may not be affiliated with that department is also helpful because they bring in a new insight. They bring in, fresh eyes, and it's a requirement anyway of the standard that they are independent of the, during internal audits. The biggest problem I see with root corrective actions is recall analysis does not go back far enough. And we want to get kind of that hurried. Let's get this done so we get our certification in time. We don't have a problem with the BRCGS four and NSF. We're not turning it in on time. But if you don't go back to the real root cause, you're just gonna repeat it again. So a lot of times, we'll just see train train the auditor, may train the technicians, lack of training, etcetera. And that's really in a lot of times not the root cause. It's sometimes, yes. And, you know, you can't always train somebody to put their hair on correctly. Right? But they're just gonna do it or not do it. But a lot of times, what we'll see is that their, their problem is only partially mitigated because they haven't gone back as far as they can into the root cause. And an example of that is, you know, a lot of times, we have nonconformances for chemical bottles left lying around, and you have to secure your chemicals. And so you would see retrained the maintenance technicians or retrained the operators on chemical storage. Well, the real root cause isn't that they don't know that. They've been trained on that. The root cause is that the storage where it is is so far away from their workstation that it takes them ten minutes to go down to the other end of the warehouse to put it away and come back, and they can't leave their workstation now. So if they would find that root cause, they would adapt that and provide another storage location closer to the work area. So that's just a a very, I guess, simplified example of what we're seeing in terms of the corrective actions and root cause analysis, overall. That's terrific, and thank you for that example. It's probably very helpful to our attendees. That covers most of the broad questions that we have. So thank you everyone for attending today's webinar, and thank you to and Emily, our presenters. I'm sure our audience is really appreciative of the knowledge you've shared. If anybody who's attending the webinar would like a follow-up, conversation with someone from NSF, you can always request that by going to NSF.org and using the contact us function. Beyond that, we thank everyone for their participation today, both attendees and presenters, and look forward to speaking with you all again soon. Thank you for presenting.