July 16, 2024
At WineWorks we welcome external audits as a benchmark for our business and challenging us to continually improve our service.
However, compliance is a growing cost to everyone’s business, hence we have been reviewing our approach to auditing and certifications.
We are currently audited to several standards across our three sites for a total of 18 audits per year. Of these, BRCGS forms our benchmark certification; this is an internationally recognised standard for food manufacturing which is conducted as a 3 or 4 day on-site deep dive into very detailed parts of our process. All sites have recently undergone their BRCGS audit with a result of at least an ‘A’ grade for each site.
In the future, when we are requested to meet a new standard, we will consider the value it offers our clients, and the actual cost to stage it. If it’s not deemed as being of greater benefit for all then we would expect to have a conversation about sharing the costs.
Additionally, we are starting to see a number of clients wishing to conduct their own audits of our systems. A desktop audit is generally easy to accommodate and support, but where an audit requires a site visit and considerable time requirement from our compliance staff, we may have a discussion around a fair share of this cost too.
Our standard certifications and approvals for the business and across all sites are: BRCGS, WSMP, SWNZ, BioGro, FDA, Toitū Envirocare, MPI (Approved Transitional Facilities) and Ecovadis.
Current site-specific approvals are:
- WineWorks Auckland: SEDEX
- WineWorks Hawke’s Bay: NP3 (National Programme Certification)
- WineWorks Marlborough: ALDI, Coles, The Cooperative Food, IPL, Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury, SEDEX, and Secure Export Scheme
If you would like to discuss this further, please contact your local General Manager, or Quality and Compliance Manager.
