BRCGS Standards
BRC service package – fees
It’s that time of the year again – BRCGS fees go up from 1st August 2022
BRCGS service package fees
BRCGS charge a service package fee to gain a BRCGS certificate. The current fee from 1st August 204 is £860.
Below is a chart that shows the service package fees since 2011.
Based on the inflation calculator by Bank of England, the service package fee of £180 in 2014, would be worth £240.99 in July 2024.
The private equity company, LGC Ltd, acquired BRCGS in 2016. It is no coincidence the scheme fees spiked in 2018 and 2019. This is a “pump and dump” technique that is common to over inflate the price and then sell. Which is what happened in 2019 when LGC Ltd was sold to other private equity companies Cinven and Astorg at 3x the original purchase price. In August 2023, BRCGS will increase its scheme fees from £750 to £795 for its manufacturing standard. BRCGS have in excess of 29000 certificates for this standard, which means revenue of over £23,000,000 every year just for this standard. And remember BRCGS have many other standards on offer. It is very difficult for any food organization to move away from BRCGS as this is mandatory for a commercial contract with the big food retailers. So I would expect further price increases in 2024, 2025, etc until Cinven and Astorg decide to sell BRCGS to the next private equity company.
As an Broker and Agent users BRC has become so prescriptive to CB that we were refused audit on sister branch (which is foreign office address for importing purposes after Brexit) and cannot find another to be able to do it when all is so simple. I agree with most comments that the cost is not justified…
The crazy thing is that we pay for a BRCGS audit to appease our customers & then Tesco send in their own appointed auditors which we also have to pay for.
For interest – I recently undertook a cost analysis of six “5 STAR” rated CB’s, and the cost differential is significant, well worth a shop around!
Good Morning – I cannot see what additional cost benefit we are getting for a 14% increase.
BRCGS need to start review why over the past three years we have had a substantial increase for no additional benefit – as a business group we will see a cost increase overall of £1800 which has to be justified but put a few adverts out and no free training is not satisfactory.
My thoughts are that this is still the best food safety standard for the majority of food products on sale in the UK (certainly more focused than the vagueness of the FSSC 22000 / ISO 22000).
Without this we would be dropped in a heart beat by customers. At the moment I don’t think we are asked to do anything which we shouldn’t be doing anyway – so no lip service from this perspective.
However – is it worth the money? No.
Do we use all the pointless extra’s on the websites etc – No.
We are a food manufacturer who uses FSSC2200 and we have no issue with it.
BRC is too prescriptive and does not take into account the size of operations or what is actually done.
As previously states, BRC was supposed to remove any retailer audit or help with supplier approval for B2B but very few people accept the certificate for face value and he decrease in inspections / audit / customers questionnaires has not decreased.
If I was to increase my prices like BRC does, I will be closed by now
As the BRC was meant to replace the costly retailer audits and yet I have in the last three months had 6 Retailer audits I can’t see how BRC can justify a huge fee increase above the rate of inflation. If the BRC audit did what it was supposed to do and stopped all the unnecessary and burdensome customer audits then I for one would pay three times the amount in fees and still be saving money but it doesn’t, so apart from the fact that all the retailers “require” us to have it what is the point of the BRC audit?
This is my opinion
BRC for the horticultural grower who grows and packs his own produce, no processing, does not fit.
We have to carry out tasks irrelevant to the product in order to gain certification.
So we are employing people to carry out these tasks which have no relevance or impact on the product.
Is this right? in this modern world is this really necessary?
Most Horticultural products can be grown on an allotment and eaten almost immediately without 100 pieces of paper to comply
Hope someone gets this
The ‘benefits’ in my eyes do not warrant the 416% increase in the Service Charge cost over an 8yr period.
There has been a substantial increase in fees in a relatively short period of time, because extra services are offered.
Can you get an indication as to what percentage of BRC customers want these extra services (e.g. based on a short questionnaire)?
If this is not an overwhelming majority (my guess is it might be a minority), perhaps we can request BRC to stop this development and revert back to the basic service package (since their customers don’t want it). Alternatively, BRC may consider to offer options: those who appreciate the extra services can opt for them and pay a higher fee, those who are happy with a basic package can opt for this and pay a lower fee.
Its all pretty much waffle and hyperbole.
Customers just look at the grading, maybe the CAR also but not always.
Sites don’t compare themselves to peers?
The other “tools” that have been added give little value, BRCGS certification is a requirement of supply in most cases, I dont know any companies who think, “hey, I’ll pay for an additional audit I dont need just for the prestige”
If we went to our customers with an arbitury price increase using similar reasoning I’m pretty sure of the response from the buyer.
For example; we operate a small seasonal single product packhouse in South Africa which required BRC in order to supply a limited qty into the UK, The CB had increased the man hours from 2 to 2.5 days and the inclusive quote was close to £5K. (SGS) (Small packhouse on the farm and 3 coldstores, our own fruit, no CCPs on HACCP)
We decided to forgo BRC as it wasnt cost effective. A well known South African retailer undertook thier own quite arduous but effective 1 day audit instead, for free. Thier “sister” company in the UK, accepted this audit and we ended up sending more product to the UK than before.
While I understand brand protection and food safety are a pre requisite of supply, the cost of achieving this assurance is becoming an ever increasing financial and manpower burden in doing business
Well done Philp on reviewing your situation and undertaking a meaningful audit for your business rather than the lip service that so often happens with BRC audits.
The BRCGS audit duration is calculated by site size, staff numbers and HACCP studies with larger operations, in theory at least albeit not in practice, taking longer to complete. Why could the BRCGS not do something similar with their service charge so that smaller companies are not affected disproportionally to larger companies?
Could quite easily determine the service charge via a percentage, which will always ensure fairness.