"BRC certified" is on a lot of packaging websites. It's a real standard with a real audit behind it, and it's also easy to claim loosely. If you supply a supermarket, a contract caterer or a large food manufacturer, your own audits will ask what your packaging supplier holds. This is what the answer should look like.
What BRC is
BRCGS, originally the British Retail Consortium, publishes a set of Global Standards that retailers use to audit their supply chain. There's one for food manufacturers, one for storage and distribution, and one for packaging: the Global Standard for Packaging Materials. It's the packaging one that matters for pouches.
It's not a product test. It's an audit of the site that makes the packaging: how it manages hygiene, how it controls raw materials and traceability, how it stops foreign bodies getting into the product, how it trains people, how it handles a complaint, whether the quality system actually runs day to day. An auditor from a licensed certification body spends days on site, usually once a year, and either announced or unannounced.
How the grades work
The audit records non-conformities against the standard's clauses, and the grade comes from how many and how serious.
| Grade |
What it means |
| AA |
No critical or major non-conformities, five or fewer minors. The top grade. |
| A |
No critical or major, six to ten minors. |
| B |
Eleven to sixteen minors, or one major with fewer minors. |
| C |
More minors again, or a major plus minors. Closer follow-up required. |
| D / uncertificated |
A critical, or too many majors. Certificate withheld. |
A "+" after the grade means the audit was unannounced, which some retailers now prefer. So AA+ is the best result there is, and AA is the grade where an auditor found almost nothing to write up.
Why retailers ask for it
A supermarket can't audit every film supplier of every meat processor it buys from. It can require that its suppliers only buy packaging from BRC-certified sites, and check the certificate. That pushes the requirement down the chain: if you want to supply the retailer, your pouch supplier needs the certificate. Flexipol's site holds BRC Global Standard for Packaging Materials at AA, and we're an approved supplier to M&S, which is the kind of customer that requires it.
What it means for a smaller buyer
If you're a butcher or a restaurant, nobody's going to ask for your pouch supplier's certificate. What the grade tells you is that the pouches come from a site that's been checked for the things you can't see: that the film is what the spec says, that there's traceability back to the batch, that the factory is clean and the seals are tested. It's the difference between "food safe" as a phrase and "food safe" as an audited fact.
It also matters if you ever grow into supplying a bigger customer. Having the right packaging supplier on file from the start is one fewer thing to change.
What to ask a supplier who claims it
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Which standard? Packaging Materials, not Food or Storage and Distribution. A distributor's warehouse certificate says nothing about the factory that made the pouch.
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Which site? The certificate names a site. If the supplier buys pouches in from elsewhere, it's the manufacturer's certificate you need, not the reseller's.
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What grade, and when was the audit? Certificates last a year. Ask for a copy.
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Can you supply a declaration of compliance for the film? That's the food contact document for your own file, separate from BRC.
We'll answer all four on request. It's part of what buying direct from the manufacturer gets you, covered in the buying direct guide.
Where it fits with food safety law
BRC is voluntary. The legal side is food contact regulation, which the film has to meet whether or not anyone audits the site, and your own HACCP plan, which covers how you use the pouch. The food safety guide covers that half.
Need it for a supplier approval form? Email orders@flexipol.co.uk and ask for the BRC certificate and film declaration. They go out the same day.
