British Retail Consortium (BRC) Global Standards are gaining significant traction in China and the US. "We are certifying more sites in the US now than SQF (Safe Quality Food)," said BRC global standards sales and marketing manager Nigel Scott. "We are also making real progress in China, particularly with our consumer products standard.
"We believe there are 30,000 more sites that could be BRC certified in the US for consumer products and 150,000 plus in China so just getting 10% of these markets would be nice."
Significant progress had also been made on the BRC directory: a searchable online database containing audit reports from all 16,000 BRC-certified sites. This was an invaluable source of information outlining who had been evaluated, by whom and when, plus any concerns raised, he said. But it was also helping to identify problem areas in order to allocate resources more appropriately.