Week 12 Supplier Approval - We've Got SALSA Sussed

 Week 12 Supplier Approval

Hi Everyone!

SUPPLIER AND RAW MATERIAL APPROVAL

Supplier and Raw Material Approval is an area I have had a lot of experience with. I have worked for many companies setting up systems for SALSA, BRC and retailers.

Supplier and Raw Material Approval has to have the attention needed when setting it up initially. This is so that the management of suppliers becomes easy to control on an ongoing basis.

I am going to give you some really simple and effective ways of working with suppliers, ensuring you get all of the documentation you need and collating it in one easy to reference place.

Let’s get started!

What’s coming next…

Supplier & Raw Material Controls

Week 13 – Goods In

 

Please see the attached file for getting SALSA sussed…

Supplier & Raw Material Approval – what do you need to show your SALSA auditor?

Supplier & Raw Material Approval Procedure

Supplier List

Supplier Certificates

Supplier Questionnaire

Raw Material List

Raw Material Specifications

 

Supplier & Raw Material Approval Procedure

The Raw Material and Supplier Approval procedure needs to state exactly how you are going to approve your suppliers.

 

Supplier Approval is usually based on:

1.       Certification

2.       Supplier Questionnaires

3.       Raw Material Specifications

 

 

 

 

Certification

·         Approving through their food safety standard certification – such as BRC, SALSA, and other certificates such as FSSC22000, IFS, SQF. You would request a copy of the certificate and ask for it at renewal every year, so you know they have kept up with their audits. Make sure you keep a copy on your file ready for showing your auditor.

 

Questionnaires

·         If the supplier does not have one of the above certificates, then it is necessary to send them a Supplier Questionnaire to complete is necessary. In addition to the questionnaire, I would request:

o   The latest EHO (Environmental Health Officer) inspection report

o   HACCP plan

 

The suppliers who are not certified to any standard, are your higher risk suppliers. They may not have the food safety controls in place you require. That is why sending a questionnaire is important, as on this document, you can ask about all of their food safety standards. You can base your decision on approval depending on the result of their questionnaire.

 

If you request a suppliers HACCP plan and they do not have one, that should start ringing alarm bells! It is a legal requirement for all food businesses to have a HACCP based food safety system in place. If they do not know what it is, you could point them in the direction of someone who can help them.

 

Questionnaires need to be completed again by suppliers every 3 years, just in case there have been changes on their site.

 

Raw Material Specifications

Raw material specifications are documents which have all of the detail about the raw material. It is a document which is used as an agreement between you and your supplier. The agreement is that the supplier will always deliver the ingredient to the quality and food safety standard set out in the document.

 

It is very important to obtain these before you purchase from your supplier! Not just for the purposes of agreeing the quality and standard, but also, due to the fact it has so much information on it that you need to know.

 

The specification details the following:

 

·         Supplier details

·         Raw material name and legal description

·         Ingredients

·         Nutritional information

·         Allergens

·         Micro standards

·         Chemical standards

·         Physical standards

·         Packaging formats

·         Quantity

·         Shelf life

·         Storage conditions – chilled, ambient or frozen

 

As you can see from the list above, this information gives you a full picture of the ingredient being purchased. You can base approval of the raw material on the information provided on the spec, and decide if it is the right ingredient for you and for the products you are making.

 

If the specification was to show that the supplier had multiple allergen risks from peanuts, nuts, sesame, soya for example, then it might not be suitable for you. I see this a lot on specifications, so for this reason alone it is of utmost importance to check the specs!

 

If the shelf life of the ingredient is not sufficient for your purposes, based on minimum order quantities, it might not be the right ingredient for you.

 

If the supplier does not have a specification, I would start to question if they really are a reputable supplier. Although you can send them a blank specification to complete. If this contains all of the information you need for the ingredient, then you may not have to rule them out.

 

Raw Material Specifications can vary from a one-page document to an eight-page plus document, depending on the supplier! Some are much more detailed than others, but as long as they have the abovementioned detail on them, that is the key information required.

 

The example below is a template for a raw material specification.

 

 

Supplier List & Raw Material List

Suppliers and raw materials go hand in hand.

Once you have gathered all the information from the suppliers as described above, best practice is to collate it into one reference document, so that you can easily check on expiry dates of certificates and specifications. It will make it easier to manage in the long term.

 

Therefore, having a spreadsheet with all raw materials and the suppliers works perfectly.

 

On this spreadsheet, I would include the following:

·         Supplier name

·         Supplier contact name, email and number

·         Certificate Type: BRC, SALSA, EHO Inspection report

·         Certificate Expiry

·         Raw Material Supplied

·         Raw Material Spec received

·         Raw Material Spec Expiry (3 years after date on spec)

·         Storage Requirement – Chilled, Frozen or Ambient

·         Allergens in raw material – this will be stated on the raw material specification

·         Micro risk – this will be stated on the raw material specification

·         Chemical risk – this will be stated on the raw material specification (if applicable)

·         Physical Risk – this will be stated on the raw material specification (if applicable)

·         Adulteration & Substitution Risk – This topic will be covered in detail in two weeks.

 

It might look something a little like this:

 

1.6.1 RAW MATERIAL, SUPPLIER & ALLERGEN RECORD

Supplier

Ingredient / Packaging Supplied

Contact No.
Contact Name & Email

Allergens Contained

Storage
Chilled / Frozen / Ambient

Specification Received

Specification Expiry (3 years)

Accreditation standard

Expiry Date of Certificate

Micro

Allergen

Physical

Chemical

Adulteration & Substitution

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Setting this spreadsheet up to start off with may seem like a lot of work. However, you need a system, and this method is tried and tested.

 

It’s an excellent way of keeping all of your supplier and raw material information together. It will make you very knowledgeable about your raw materials too.

 

It will highlight the risks you are bringing onto your site, and the risks you have to control in your finished product.

 

Specifications need to be reviewed at least three-yearly.

 

Food contact packaging is also classed as a raw material for which you need a specification. In addition to the specification, you need to make sure it is suitable for use in contact with food. There are two documents you can request for this:

1.       Declaration of Compliance to state that the packaging is made in line with the legislation Food Contact Materials Legislation (EC)1935/2004 – please find the link to the legislation below:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2004:338:0004:0017:en:PDF

2.       A Migration Certificate – this is a certificate to state the packaging has been tested to make sure the chemicals which are used to make it, do not migrate into food when in the packaging.

 

Ongoing Monitoring of Suppliers & Raw Materials

It’s a great idea to have one day per month that supplier Certificates and Raw Material Specification expiry dates are checked, so that these can be requested for the month ahead.

 

Any new Raw Materials or Suppliers can have all of the documentation requested as you proceed with new products too, and can be added to the spreadsheet.

 

NB: Do not forget that if you have new product, new suppliers and new raw materials – that should trigger doing a HACCP review.

 

Happy Supplier Approving!

 

If you need assistance, please feel free to contact me! On that note, that is the end of this section. Please do not hesitate to ask any questions.

 

Be careful and stay safe!

Ruth

Ruthshawconsultingltd@gmail.com

07732 966 836

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