OVERVIEW OF FOOD PACKAGING STANDARDS

Mainly driven by the food industry, standards, certificates, and audits have long become integral part of the food packaging manufacturing industry. Playing an essential role there, recycled plastic packaging producers are facing the certification culture as well. Some want to be certificated, many must. Commanding customers, powerful competitors, and rising corporate responsibility are forcing them to be part of the game. Needless to say, for many recyclers it is an incredible burden. Time consuming, resource demanding, and simply not necessary are quite often arguments against a certification. Moreover, for those who are not deeply involved in quality management, the variety of food safety standards seems to be an impenetrable jungle. Possibilities range from BRC to FSSC, IFS and SQF.

But what is behind these acronyms and which standard is useful for your business?

Our new viscoNEWS serial will give an insight into food safety standards and highlight their individual requirements.

Before going into detail in the next viscoNEWS issues, another term is important to know: GFSI, the Global Food Safety Initiative. This non-profit organization benchmarks different food safety certification programs. Related to food packaging production there are four GFSI recognized schemes against which you can be certified. These four standards are going to be worked out in the following viscoNEWS issues.

The aim is to give you as a recycling company an overview of its requirements and facilitate your decision for or against a certain standard. Whatever standard you choose, viscotec will do its best to support you during implementation and help to prepare your staff for forthcoming audits.