Food Safety, Hygiene, Health and Safety
 It's vitally important to us that our customers have total confident and piece of mind. That's why we are totally committed to the highest food safety, hygiene, health and safety and environmental protection standards. We wouldn't have it any other way.
For a start we have The British Retail Consortium (BRC) Grade A global standard for food safety. This standard is designed to provide certification for food manufacturers who implement good manufacturing practices and have the supporting quality management systems to produce safe, legal product meeting their customer's high quality requirements. The minimum requirement for our own suppliers is GlobalG.A.P, LEAF, Red Tractor and/or BRC certification.
Through GlobalG.A.P. and Red Tractor accreditation we ensure a framework is provided for the implementation and certification of good agricultural practices. This is provided by a network of over 100,000 certified farms in over 100 countries. The use of fertilisers and pesticides is monitored by strict controls and there is full traceability from all our growers from field to ourselves. They employ the services of qualified Agronomists to ensure minimal pesticide and fertiliser usage and our procurement team have many years of experience in this field.
 All Southern Salads' staff are trained in house to Food Hygiene Level 2 by our very own training team who ensure that they are fully aware of Good Manufacturing Practices. We are very proud to say that our induction in Health & Safety and Food Safety can be delivered in a variety of languages including Urdu, Hindu, Nepalese, Polish, Bulgarian, Lithuanian and Russian, (despite English being our first language) and that we employ West Kent College down the road to help anyone who needs it with a better understanding of the English.
Not only that but we have, since 2007, put 100 of our staff through National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ's) focusing on factory focused food management. Then we know the people we employ are fully trained. This is a programme we very much believe in and will continue to support.
Production hygiene is crucial to our business and to underwrite food safety. Our production lines are cleaned from top to bottom every day using the latest state of the art ATP rapid testing methods. If we don't get the right results we just do it again. Only when they are squeaky clean do we start production.
 Our technical team carry out daily taste panels and product evaluations. They look at product attributes including mix, cut style, taste and smell. We're very passionate about measuring factory performance against customer specifications to ensure we're getting it just right and they are getting exactly what they want.
We have been registered and accredited as a member of Investors in People (IIP) for ten years. This helps the people in our business know the direction the business is going in and helps them to understand their part in it, giving them the knowledge and skills to deliver their valuable contribution.
In reception we've got lots of awards. We know we’re not the only ones to get them but they still make us all very proud. We've got lots from our lovely customers, and one of our favourites is from the Kent Business Awards. It's for Excellence in Training and Development.
Enough of this bragging. Sorry but we thought you'd like to know. We believe it's the attention to detail that drives a successful business.
|
