BRCGS Food Certification in Kenitra

BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 is a GFSI-recognised standard that applies to sites that prepare, pack or process food, fresh produce included. For a Gharb exporter, the distinction is important: production in the field falls under an agricultural scheme such as GLOBALG.A.P. IFA v6, whereas the packing station, the freezing tunnel or the processing workshop fall under BRCGS Food Safety when the buyer requires it.

Demand generally comes from British retailers and the importers that supply them, for strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, citrus and early vegetables. Frozen red fruit sold to manufacturers of dairy products, pastry or beverages often follows the same logic: these customers require a GFSI-recognised certificate from their ingredient suppliers.

The audit covers management commitment, the HACCP plan, the management system, premises, control of products and processes, and personnel, seasonal workers included.

Those concerned first are the sites that receive, sort, wash, pack or freeze the fruit and vegetables of the Gharb plain: strawberry, raspberry and blueberry stations, citrus stations, early vegetable packers, red fruit freezing units, workshops for purees, coulis or fruit preparations intended for industry.

Cold stores that store these products on behalf of third parties, without processing them, fall rather under BRCGS Storage & Distribution Issue 4. Packaging manufacturers in the area, trays, boards, crates or boxes, fall under BRCGS Packaging Materials Issue 7.

The project mobilises the whole chain of responsibility of the site: management, which carries food safety culture; the station manager; the cold chain manager; and the supervisors of seasonal teams, on whom most day-to-day hygiene rests. A cooperative that pools several growers around a common station is also concerned: it is the station that is certified, and the growers become its approved suppliers.

Kenitra brings together two economies that sit side by side without resembling each other. On one side, the Atlantic Free Zone and its automotive cluster, organised around a car plant opened in 2019 and its suppliers of wiring, plastics, seats and metal parts. On the other, the agricultural plain of the Gharb, with its strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, its citrus and early vegetables, and the whole network of packing stations, cold tunnels and processing units that allows them to be exported.

For BRCGS, it is this second set that counts, and it has its own constraints. Production concentrates on part of the year: numerous teams must be recruited and trained in a short time, then the system must be kept alive during the off-season, when activity slows and attention relaxes. Red fruit is fragile and often eaten without cooking: hand hygiene, the quality of water and ice, and temperature control between receipt and dispatch are decisive. The cold chain continues to the truck or container, which brings hauliers and warehouses into the station's field of monitoring.

Part of the harvest is also processed on site, frozen or prepared for industry. These workshops add their own hazards: plant or mineral foreign bodies, contamination in ready-to-eat areas, control of freezing cycles.

ACG has an office in Kenitra, avenue Hassan II, in the heart of this area. Our consultants know the rhythm of the campaigns and can be on site at the hour when the station runs.

Buyers of fresh and frozen fruit ask for a BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 certificate covering the station or the freezing unit and, upstream, proof that the farms supplying it are certified to a recognised agricultural scheme. They often add their own requirements: pesticide residue limits sometimes stricter than the regulations, microbiological analyses on finished products, washing protocols, traceability codes down to the plot.

On these sites, audit nonconformities concentrate on a few subjects. Approval and monitoring of growers, with a risk-based residue analysis plan. The quality of water in contact with the product and of ice. Hygiene and training of seasonal workers, with records for each person. Environmental monitoring in packing and freezing areas, notably for Listeria. Foreign bodies specific to red fruit: stones, stems, plant debris. Temperature records throughout the chain, with the deviations found and the decision taken for each batch. And the traceability test, which must quickly link a shipped pallet to its growers and its packaging batches.