FSSC 22000 Certification in Casablanca

FSSC 22000 is a food safety certification scheme recognised by the GFSI. Its version 7, published in May 2026, brings together three blocks audited at the same time: the management system standard ISO 22000:2018, the prerequisite programmes of ISO 22002-100:2025 completed by the sector part for your activity, and the additional requirements of the FSSC Foundation.

In Casablanca, demand rarely comes from plant management itself. It comes from buyers: headquarters of food groups that impose a common scheme on all their units, retailers that have their own brands manufactured, foreign brand owners that entrust part of their production to local contract manufacturers. For these customers, FSSC 22000 has a practical advantage: its ISO structure combines with the ISO 9001:2026 or ISO 14001:2026 systems that many Casablanca companies already have. The certificate does not replace the ONSSA sanitary authorisation or approval, which remains the regulatory prerequisite.

The scheme concerns any company in the food chain that manufactures, packs, stores or packages. In Casablanca, four profiles recur.

Processors of category C: dairies, beverage makers, biscuit and confectionery makers, oil refiners and packers. On their multi-product lines, allergen management and changeovers become central.

Packaging manufacturers and printers supplying the food industry, in category I with ISO 22002-4: plastic films and trays, cartons, labels. Any site that prints labels is now targeted by requirement 2.5.2 d.

Manufacturers of ingredients, additives and flavourings from fine chemicals, in category K.

Logistics and distribution platforms, in category G for storage and transport, or FI when they cut or repack. For a group that steers several plants from its Casablanca headquarters, we also help set up a common documentary foundation that each site adapts.

Casablanca concentrates a large share of the country's industrial and commercial activity. The headquarters of major groups and retail chains are located there, and it is often where the specifications imposed on suppliers throughout Morocco are written.

The industrial fabric is spread over several zones: Ain Sebaa and Sidi Bernoussi in the east, Moulay Rachid, Lissasfa and Bouskoura in the south. There are buildings of every generation, some extended in stages, where dairies, biscuit makers and packaging workshops sit alongside metalworking, plastics and chemicals. Nearby Mohammedia completes the picture, and the Nouaceur zone, near Mohammed V airport, has developed around aeronautics and logistics. The port of Casablanca, which handles containers and general cargo, links these plants to imported raw materials and export markets.

For food safety, this fabric creates particular situations. An old plant next to a chemical or metalworking activity forces a serious assessment of the site's surroundings and flows, as the prerequisite programmes of ISO 22002-100:2025 require. Plastic and carton packaging manufacturers, numerous in the region, often work for several sectors at once and must clearly separate the production meant for food contact. Finally, the density of the logistics offer makes temperature-controlled storage and transport a link that buyers examine closely.

FSSC 22000 version 7 handles these three situations with a single architecture, which simplifies life for groups active in several of these trades.

Casablanca buyers, and the foreign customers who source from plants in the region, first ask for a GFSI-recognised certificate, with the exact scope of the products delivered. FSSC 22000 has been among these schemes since 2010; version 7 is still going through benchmarking. If your customer requires GFSI recognition, have them confirm in writing that they accept version 7.

Next come targeted evidence: signed product specifications, allergen control plan, environmental monitoring results, analyses entrusted to a laboratory competent in the sense of ISO/IEC 17025, timed traceability exercises and, for packers, declarations of suitability for food contact.

In audits, the nonconformities we meet in the region's plants are very concrete. Changeovers between recipes with and without allergens are not validated. Environmental monitoring exists on paper, without zoning or trend analysis. Labels printed on site are not checked against the regulations of the country of sale. In buildings extended in stages, personnel and waste routes cross those of the products. Any of these points can become a major nonconformity, to be closed within 28 days.