BRCGS Food Certification in Casablanca

BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 is the BRCGS standard for sites that manufacture or process food products. Recognised by the GFSI, it is audited by an approved certification body, and the result of each audit appears in the BRCGS online directory, which buyers consult before listing a supplier.

In Casablanca, demand arrives through several doors. A biscuit maker producing under a retailer's brand for a British chain, a beverage maker supplying a multinational group, an oil producer exporting in bulk or in bottles: each receives a specification that cites BRCGS, sometimes alongside IFS Food version 8. A group headquartered in Casablanca may also decide to certify all its plants to the same standard, to speak a single language with its customers.

The standard covers senior management commitment and food safety culture, the HACCP plan, the management system, premises, control of products and processes, and personnel.

Concerned are the plants that process food in the industrial zones of Casablanca and its outskirts: dairies, beverage makers, biscuit and confectionery makers, oil producers, but also industrial bakery, condiment or ready-meal workshops that supply large retail or export.

The Casablanca fabric also includes neighbouring activities that do not fall under Food Safety. A label printer or a maker of films and trays aims for BRCGS Packaging Materials Issue 7. A logistics platform that stores food on behalf of third parties falls under Storage & Distribution Issue 4. A trader who buys and resells without touching the product falls under Agents & Brokers Issue 3. Settling this question before any spending is often the first service rendered to a Casablanca site.

Multi-site groups, finally, must decide which plants and which lines enter the scope, and what headquarters provides for the whole: purchasing, supplier approval, complaint handling.

Casablanca is Morocco's economic capital and the country's main business centre. Its port receives containers and general cargo, which places the city's plants close to both their imported raw materials and their export customers.

The food industry is spread over several zones: Ain Sebaa, Sidi Bernoussi, Moulay Rachid, Bouskoura and Lissasfa, nearby Mohammedia, and the Nouaceur area around Mohammed V airport. Dairies, beverage makers, biscuit makers, confectionery makers and oil producers sit alongside printers, plastic packaging manufacturers, chemical and pharmaceutical companies, metalworking workshops and distribution platforms.

This density weighs on a BRCGS project in two ways. First, suppliers are close: packaging, ingredients, cleaning and pest control providers are often in the same conurbation. Supplier audits become easier to organise, but the auditor expects them to be really carried out and followed up. Second, in the oldest industrial zones, many plants occupy buildings extended in stages. Infrastructure nonconformities take a large place there: crossing flows between raw materials and finished products, floors and walls that are hard to clean, high-risk areas poorly separated from the rest of the workshop.

The headquarters of many industrial groups and distributors are also in Casablanca. Certification decisions are made there, and projects often cover several sites at once, with a common calendar and plants at very different levels.

Customers of Casablanca plants first ask for a valid BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 certificate whose grade and scope really cover the products delivered. They check it in the BRCGS directory and sometimes ask for the report. Then come their own requirements: product specification, supplier questionnaires, second-party audits, and sometimes IFS Food version 8 in parallel for a German or French customer.

On lines that change recipe often, the auditor looks closely at allergen management: cross-contamination risk assessment, validated cleaning between two productions, scheduling, checking of the label and film at every changeover. A product packed in the wrong film or under the wrong label is a classic cause of recall, and a sensitive audit point.

Other usual sticking points in this type of plant: metal detector tests, glass and brittle plastic, foreign body control, approval of packaging and ingredient suppliers, and proof that food safety culture lives in the workshops instead of remaining a document signed by management.