BRCGS Food Certification in Tangier

BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 is the BRCGS standard for sites that process or pack food. Recognised by the GFSI, it allows an importer or a distributor to accept a supplier without auditing it themselves, on the strength of a certificate issued by an approved body.

In Tangier, the requirement most often arrives from the other side of the Strait. A Spanish importer reselling to British chains, a European group that has seafood or fruit and vegetables packed in northern Morocco, a manufacturer who buys ingredients: each sets its own scheme. Some ask for BRCGS, others IFS Food version 8, others FSSC 22000 version 7, and it is the buyer's written request that decides.

The difficulty specific to Tangier lies in logistics. Part of the region's food sites handle goods in transit, in warehouses or in free zones. The boundary between Food Safety, Storage & Distribution Issue 4 and Agents & Brokers Issue 3 must therefore be drawn before launching the project.

The service is aimed first at plants that process food in the Tangier and Tetouan region: workshops for fresh, frozen or processed seafood, fruit and vegetable packing units for Spain and the rest of Europe, makers of ingredients and food products located in the free zones or the Tanger Med industrial zones. For them, Food Safety Issue 9 is the standard expected by buyers who ask for BRCGS.

It then concerns companies of the food logistics chain: cold stores and platforms near the port, consolidation providers, temperature-controlled hauliers. They generally fall under Storage & Distribution Issue 4. Trading companies that buy from Moroccan plants and resell in Europe without handling the product aim for Agents & Brokers Issue 3.

Finally, a company that manufactures, stores under bond and ships its own products may fall under several standards at once. ACG helps it build a single system that answers each, instead of three parallel binders.

Tangier has been transformed around the Tanger Med port complex, one of the largest container ports in the Mediterranean, and the zones around it: Tanger Automotive City, the Tanger Free Zone and the Tanger Med industrial zones. The Melloussa car-assembly plant and its suppliers, automotive wiring, textiles and clothing for European brands, aeronautics and logistics hold a central place there.

Food processing occupies a different position there from the one it has in the large agricultural regions. It is geared to exchange: seafood and food products that cross the Strait to Spain and the rest of Europe, fruit and vegetables that transit through the port, imported ingredients processed then re-exported. Nearby Tetouan completes this fabric.

This positioning creates particular needs. The proximity of Europe shortens the time between production and delivery, which favours fresh and chilled products and puts the cold chain at the centre of the audit. Sites near the port work with numerous hauliers, trailers that change from one day to the next and multiple providers, which makes food defence very concrete: access control, seals, vehicle inspection before loading.

Bonded flows, finally, add a documentary layer that the BRCGS auditor does not verify for its own sake, but which must remain consistent with batch traceability. A gap between the two shows quickly in a recall test.

European buyers who source from Tangier ask for a valid certificate for the right standard and the right scope, and check that it covers the real address of the site that supplies them. For a manufacturer, it is Food Safety Issue 9; for a warehouse, Storage & Distribution Issue 4. They add their requirements on labelling in the language of the country of sale, product specifications, analyses and, for seafood, species and catch area.

In audits, nonconformities often lodge at the interfaces. At dispatch: inspection of vehicles and containers, temperature at loading, seals and transport documents. At receipt: checking of imported raw materials, their certificates and their labelling. In storage areas: stock rotation, isolation of nonconforming or returned products, identification of goods under bond. In food defence: list of authorised persons, control of visitors and drivers, vulnerability assessment of the docks. On fraud, finally: origin and authenticity of seafood and of ingredients bought from traders, which call for a documented and reviewed vulnerability assessment.