BRCGS, IFS or FSSC 22000 Certification Cost in Morocco and Africa

What makes up the cost of a GFSI certification?

The cost of BRCGS, IFS or FSSC 22000 certification falls into six items, and only one of them, the audit, is invoiced by the certification body. Separating them from the start stops you comparing quotes that do not cover the same scope.

Two points hold for all three standards. The hardest item to forecast is almost never consulting: it is capital works. And a project’s cost should be judged over three years, not on the initial audit alone.

We do not publish ranges in MAD: the amount of each item depends on the starting gap, the size of the site, the condition of the building and the standard chosen. ACG prices consulting and training after a gap assessment, and helps you estimate the other items from the quotes of the certification body, laboratories and contractors.

What does the certification audit cost, by site size?

The audit is charged per auditor day by the certification body, and each standard sets how that duration is calculated. Site size, number of processes and number of HACCP studies therefore drive the price more than the standard’s name.

Three factors come on top of the calculation:

1. Language. For FSSC 22000, an interpreter extends the audit by at least 20%. An auditor who speaks the site’s language, French, Arabic, English or Portuguese, avoids that cost whatever the standard.
2. Travel. An auditor flying in from another country adds travel costs, a real issue for sites in smaller African markets. Ask for travel as a separate line in every quote.
3. Frequency. For BRCGS, official position statement F926 states that the new certificate expires 6 or 12 months after the previous one depending on grade. A C or D grade therefore means two audits a year.

After the audit, BRCGS allows 28 days to close non-conformities and up to 42 calendar days to issue the certificate. A failed audit means paying for a second one, which is the strongest case for a mock audit a few weeks before.

Ask each certification body to state on its quote whether any fees linked to the programme owner (BRCGS, IFS or Foundation FSSC) are included, and in what form: the public documents of the three standards do not publish a schedule of these fees.

Which capital works come up most often?

Building hygiene and flow segregation account for most of the work, and they are common to all three standards, since all of them require robust prerequisite programmes.

These are the items we price most often during gap assessments:

• Floors, walls and ceilings in wet areas: in a fish cannery or a frozen vegetable plant, a floor to be redone can outweigh the whole consulting budget.
• Flow segregation clean / dirty, raw / cooked, materials / waste, with suitable airlocks and changing rooms.
• Foreign body detection: metal detectors, glass and hard plastics control, and their documented verification.
• Pest control: trapping plan, contractor, site map.
• Water and air: testing, treatment, filtration in sensitive areas.
• Measuring instruments: thermometers, data loggers, calibration of equipment linked to critical control points.
• Traceability tools: lot labelling and records that allow a fast recall test.

FSSC 22000 Version 7 adds one item: buying ISO 22000:2018 and ISO 22002-100:2025 with the sector part for your category, which are paid ISO standards. BRCGS states that its Food Safety standard is free through its online store, and IFS publishes the IFS Food version 8 text on its website.

Which funding can you use in Morocco and elsewhere in Africa?

In Morocco, training and training engineering can be partly funded; the audit and the works cannot, and consulting does not fall under CSF but may fall under a Maroc PME programme. No amount can be promised: it depends on your file and the rules in force when you apply.

OFPPT special training contracts (CSF) reimburse part of training costs at these reference rates: 70% for planned training delivered by an external provider, 40% for unplanned training, and the same rates applied to a retained cost of 800 MAD per day per participant for in-house training. Caps depend on the vocational training tax (TFP) the company has declared. These rules come from the CSF procedures manual of May 2006 and its Amendment No. 2 of 2 June 2014; they give an indicative order of magnitude, before caps and with no commitment.

The sector GIAC funds part of training engineering: skills needs assessment and training plan. For the food industry, this is the food industry GIAC (GIAC Agro). The reference rule, taken from the GIAC procedures manual of March 2003 and its Amendment No. 1 of 2 June 2014, is 70% coverage, capped at 100,000 MAD excluding VAT. A training needs assessment linked to a certification project is eligible.

Maroc PME, Morocco’s national agency for the promotion of SMEs, runs PACT’Qualité, a programme that supports companies from compliance through to certification: diagnostic, support, documentation, training, mock audit. Its official page announces funding of 80% of the cost of consulting and technical expertise, capped at 400,000 MAD per beneficiary, for companies with annual turnover excluding VAT of up to 200 million MAD. Eligibility and funding depend on Maroc PME’s review of the application.

The order matters: GIAC membership and engineering, then the training plan, then the CSF filing, before any session starts. Our article on funding a BRCGS, IFS or ISO project with GIAC and CSF sets out the sequence, and our OFPPT CSF guide lists the evidence to keep. To estimate a reimbursement from the official rules, use our CSF simulator, which has no binding value.

Outside Morocco, funding schemes are national. In Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria or Kenya, check your national training levy, SME agency or development partner programmes before you commit, and keep training evidence in the format they require.

How do you cut the bill without risking the audit?

Spend where it changes the outcome: the gap assessment, critical works, training project leads and the mock audit. Your own team can carry the rest, which also makes the system stronger after certification.

• Choose the standard after reading buyers’ supplier requirements, not before.
  
• Require a written gap assessment that also prices the capital works.
  
• Put the works in the capital budget from the first month.
  
• Appoint an internal project lead and protect their time in writing.
  
• Group training into one annual plan and one funding file.
  
• In Morocco, check GIAC eligibility before ordering the training needs assessment.
  
• Ask several certification bodies for quotes that itemise audit days, travel and interpreting.
  
• Where possible, choose an auditor who speaks the site’s language.
  
• Book a mock audit to avoid a second certification audit.
  
• Aim for a strong grade or score from the start, so you do not multiply audits.
  

If you are still choosing between two standards, start with our comparison BRCGS vs IFS vs FSSC 22000: which GFSI standard for which market?