BRCGS certification in Pakistan, and the grade your buyer reads

How do you get a BRCGS certificate?

One. Pick the right standard. BRCGS publishes several. Food Safety is the one most Pakistani exporters need, but packaging materials, storage and distribution, and agents and brokers are separate standards with their own requirements. Certifying the wrong one is an expensive way to find this out.

Two. Free gap analysis. We walk the site against Issue 9 and tell you which clauses you currently fail. For most Pakistani food manufacturers the gaps cluster in the same places: the fabric and layout of the building, allergen control, the depth of internal audit, and root cause analysis that stops at the symptom.

Three. Close the gaps, documentation and site together. This is the bulk of the project and it is what decides your grade.

Four. Internal audit and management review. BRCGS looks hard at both. A site that cannot show a working internal audit programme will not grade well however clean the floor is.

Five. The audit. A first certification audit is announced, so you know the date. We prepare you and attend.

Six. Close out inside 28 days. This is the step people miss. After the audit you have 28 calendar days to submit documented corrective action, and the grade is only finalised after that. Those 28 days are part of the project, not an afterthought.

Seven. Keep it. The certificate runs twelve months from the audit and is maintained by annual re audit. A lower grade or a higher risk category can mean a shorter cycle.

How does BRCGS grading actually work?

This is where BRCGS differs from everything else we certify, and it is worth understanding before you start rather than after you are graded.

Non conformities come in three levels. A minor is a small gap that does not threaten product safety or legality. A major is a substantial failure that casts doubt on the product or on the management system. A critical is a failure posing an immediate food safety risk or breaching the law.

The grade falls out of the count and the severity. Fewer and lighter findings means a higher grade, and the thresholds step down from there. A single critical finding normally produces an uncertified outcome, however well the rest of the audit went.

Two consequences follow, and they are why a BRCGS project should be run differently from an ISO one.

The target is the grade, not the pass. With ISO 9001 a pass is a pass. With BRCGS your customer sees a letter, and a weak grade invites questions even though you are certified. Preparation should aim at the grade you want to show.

Housekeeping counts more than usual. Minor findings accumulate into a lower band. The things easiest to dismiss, a damaged wall surface, an unlabelled container, a gap in a cleaning record, are exactly what moves you down.

What is the unannounced audit, and do we have to do it?

Yes, eventually, and it is better planned for than discovered.

Your first audit is announced. After that a newly certified site must have its first unannounced audit within two years, and thereafter at least one audit in every three must be unannounced. It falls inside the four month window before your re audit is due, so you know the season but not the day.

An unannounced audit earns a plus on the grade, which some buyers look for specifically. It also means the auditor sees the site as it normally runs. The honest implication is the one most sites resist: a BRCGS system has to be in its audit state every operating day, not assembled in the fortnight before a known date.

BRCGS or FSSC 22000, which does your buyer want?

Both are GFSI recognised, so both satisfy a requirement written as GFSI. If your buyer has named one specifically that settles it, and you should ask before choosing.

The practical rule. If you already hold ISO 22000, moving to FSSC 22000 is usually the shorter route, because the management system you run is most of it. If you hold nothing and your buyer is a British or European retailer, BRCGS is what they will normally name. If you hold only HACCP you are a similar distance from either.

How much does BRCGS certification cost in Pakistan?

There is no fixed price, and the honest answer is that BRCGS usually costs more than an ISO certification for the same site, for reasons you can check rather than take on trust.

It is driven by the number of sites, the processes and product categories in scope, how far your building and equipment sit from the site standards Issue 9 expects, and whether you already run a recognised food safety system. The building is the variable that surprises people. BRCGS has real expectations about fabrication, layout and product flow that a documentation project cannot satisfy.

There are two separate costs and a quote that merges them is hiding something. The consultancy fee is ours. The certification body charges its own fee based on audit days, and the BRCGS certificate fee is charged through them. Budget for the unannounced audit in the cycle as well, because it is not optional.

Axora Global quotes a consultancy fee band after a free gap analysis, because the fee varies with scope, organisation size and the number of sites, and arranges the certification body audit separately.

Why choose Axora Global for BRCGS?

Because we will tell you whether you should be doing BRCGS at all.

On a good number of the enquiries we get, the buyer requirement says GFSI and the client has assumed that means BRCGS, when FSSC 22000 would be cheaper for them and equally acceptable. We check that first, in writing, before anyone spends anything.

We work the whole food cluster, so if you need halal alongside a GFSI scheme we scope one project rather than two. We prepare you for the grade rather than for the pass. And we are consultants, not a certification body, which is the separation that makes our view of your readiness worth having.