JCS Fish achieves BRC Accreditation again

Quality manager Ann Rogers (left) and Rosie Knight of JCS Fish with their hard-earned BRC Accreditation certificate for 2021

GRIMSBY'S JCS Fish is once again celebrating achievement of the BRC Global Standard for Food Safety, despite the huge complexity and challenge of being comprehensively audited under COVID conditions.  

The BRC Global Standard for Food Safety is the most widely-used quality assurance standard in food manufacturing and the benchmark applied by all the UK’s major supermarkets to qualify their suppliers.  It is usually awarded as the result of a detailed on-site audit by a BRC-accredited assessor, something not possible this year due to the pandemic. 

JCS financial controller, Rosie Knight, says, “The BRC audit is always rigorous, but the COVID era assessment proved exceptionally complex, requiring two and a half days of online assessment, factory inspections conducted via WhatsApp and the electronic sharing and processing of a vast number of documents.   

“We estimate that achieving BRC under the current conditions was about 25% more costly in terms of both time and expenditure.  Nevertheless, we’re delighted to have overcome the challenges to achieve our BRC accreditation once again.” 

Family-owned JCS Fish specialises in salmon and has managed to maintain its £10M revenue over the past 12 months by replacing the loss of foodservice sales during the pandemic to an upturn in its home delivery and retail sales.