ARN has achieving BRCGS AA Accreditation
All the goss, from Gordon
Hello again
I’m really pleased to announce that ARN has achieved BRCGS AA accreditation. It affects everything about our business, everybody who works in it; every single one of our suppliers and last but not least, you – our customers. So, I thought I’d take this opportunity to describe what we had to demonstrate to earn this recognition and most importantly, what it means to you as an ARN customer.
BRCGS stands for ‘Brand Reputation through Compliance Global Standards Certification’. It’s a Global Food Safety Initiative benchmarked standard for food manufacturers, packaging producers, distributors and other food-handling businesses. It assures that companies meet strict, internationally recognised standards for product safety, legality and quality, which is often required by retailers and brand owners to qualify suppliers. The process involves a rigorous third-party audit of a company’s food safety management system, which includes aspects like HACCP implementation, operational controls, and a culture of food safety.
I’ll be honest: we thought we already ticked all the boxes and that it’d take us 6 months or so to go through the process. We thought it’d be easy to confirm what we already knew, namely that we were doing everything right. In the end, though, it took 15 months! Despite the fact that every step along the way meant a ton of hard work, it was worth it: we were awarded the highest possible ‘pass’ grade – AA. The auditor, let me tell you, was not a man to have the wool pulled over his eyes. His name summed him up: Mr. Sharpe and no, I’m not pulling your leg.
There are all kinds of nuances within the regulations which we never dreamed would be relevant to closed products. Nevertheless, we had to embrace them.
The process affected every department at ARN
The process affected every department at ARN, nobody got away scot-free. It has an impact on recruitment, job descriptions, return to work interviews and document control. What’s that? Well, whenever a document is circulated across the business, it has to be subject to document controls, to ensure that everyone is singing from the same song sheet. Who knew?
We’ve also been required to make these physical changes around the site. The warehouse has always been pretty watertight, but it used to be that you could just walk into our offices. Not any more! We’ve lined the local locksmith’s pockets by putting locks on all the doors and it’s not just about preventing access to our stock; it’s also about protecting our people and ensuring a safe working environment.
As you’d expect, we already employed the services of a pest control company, but we had to do an awful lot more than that to comply. Consequently, we’ve set up quarantine areas and return areas, all that kind of thing. We were also required to ‘vet’ our suppliers, which was a huge challenge and an important one, because as a wholesaler, we’re basically certifying the integrity of the supply chain.
Our objective in going through the (exhaustive) process was to ensure that as a vending operator you would have no risk to worry about, because we have ensured the traceability of all the products you sell. Part of the deal is that, once a product recall is initiated, we have be be able to trace where those products are within four hours.
You might expect that bringing all these teams and people together was very difficult, but because we’ve got such a good team, it was a little bit easier than it might have been…
Basically, we’ve been though a root and branch hazard analysis of our critical control points, which is monitored thanks to 71 forms, 13 policies, and 33 procedures. Count ’em!
It the ultimate way to demonstrate to the UK’s vending industry that by partnering with ARN, you are assured of the safety, the legality and the integrity of each and every product you buy.
And Mr. Sharp? The completed process left him a happy man. He was moved to write to us and say that ours was ‘in the top 5%’ of all initial audits he’s ever conducted.
We’ll take that!
Until next time,
Gordon.
*Gordon Johnston is Sales Director at the UK’s premier vending wholesaler – ARN
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