GMP Certification: What is it, and what does it mean for you?

Introduction

In the Supplement Manufacturing Industry, it is critical that you keep to a high level of quality control to ensure the safety of your products and, ultimately your customers. That is why it is important to become a GMP Certified business.

As of January 2022, Blackburn Distributions are now a fully GMP Certified Manufacturer to the supplement, healthcare and pharmaceutical industries!

This may leave you questioning, however, what is GMP? What does a GMP Certification mean for me, the customer??

Today, we will take a look at what a GMP Certification is, what working with a GMP Certified company means for you, and also why being certified is so important.

What is a GMP Certification?

First of all, GMP stands for 'Good Manufacturing Practices', this term involves all of the practices involved in the manufacturing of a range of different products. Products include food-related items, beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceutical products, medical devices, and in our case, supplements.

The GMP Guidelines provide criteria that must be met when it comes to manufacturing these products. The main purpose of GMP is to prevent any harm being caused to the end-user of the product when broken down, this includes:

• Ensuring it is free from contamination
• Is consistent in its production
• Manufacturing has been well documented
• Staff trained appropriately
• And that the product has been quality checked at various points in the manufacturing processes

All of these factors make up the core values of what GMP means and also the procedures we must follow to meet GMP requirements.

This means that in order to pass a GMP Audit, you must have all of these procedures in place.

What does a GMP Audit consist of?

There are 9-key areas that the third-party assessor will look for when auditing a manufacturing site. These consist of:

• Personnel: This area covers a supplier's procedures when it comes to reporting employee illness, employee dress codes, food handling procedures, supervision policies and training methods.

• Plant and Grounds: They will assess the functionality of the facility, the cleanliness of the exterior (Things such as overgrown weeds, stagnated water, etc), the storage units, protection of glass lightbulbs and proper ventilation.

• Sanitary Operations: This includes the frequency and thoroughness in which the facility and equipment are cleaned, disposal and storage of toxic substances, single-use paper disposal and pest control effectiveness.

• Sanitary Facilities and Controls: Includes consistent use of potable water, water temperature and pressure appropriate for manufacturing use, adequate plumbing and floor drainage systems.

• Equipment and Utensils: Includes the proper cleaning and maintenance of equipment, equipment made from non-toxic and corrosion-resistant material and adequate temperature-controlled environments.

• Processes and Controls: Includes quality control checks on all raw material and work area testing (Allergens & cross-contamination), food packaging and shipping procedure checks.

• Warehousing and Distribution: Includes proper storage procedures, a record of previously shipped loads, stock rotation and proper safety labelling.

• Holding and Distribution of Human Food By-Products for use as Animal Food: Includes assurance that containers meant for human by-products are properly designed and labelled to clearly distinguish its use as animal food and not to be confused with trash.

• Defect action levels: Includes procedures in place to identify and address defective items.

As you can see, the GMP Audit goes into very close detail to highlight potential faults across all areas of manufacturing.

What does working with a GMP Certified Manufacturer mean for you?

Working with us, a GMP Certified manufacturer, means that you are working with a fully compliant and reliable company and ensures you that we are maintaining the criterial measures throughout our manufacturing processes.

It also assures you that we are manufacturing with the highest quality materials in the cleanest of environments. All of our ingredients are third-party tested ensuring that they are free from any foreign substances and are used in class 7 clean rooms which are of high cleanliness and free from contamination.

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Why is GMP so Important?

Having a GMP Certification is extremely important as they provide us with strict guidelines to follow to ensure the safety of our products for our consumers. Without guidelines such as GMP in place, that safety is not ensured.

GMP doesn't only assure safety for consumers, it is also important for us, the manufacturer. It gives us protection against the potential liability of manufacturing a product that causes harm to a customer as we have taken the necessary precautions to prevent this from happening. On top of that, it gives us a literal stamp of approval to assure us that we are providing a world-class service for our customers!