Legal and technical support for small processors

Small food manufacturers can get legal and technical advice enabling them to secure listings with major retailers by complying with their standards thanks to a service just launched by Bodycote LawLabs.

The company has launched a new modular management and technical support programme called ‘Retail Ready’, which takes manufacturers through product legality such as composition and labelling or production control. It is designed to ensure that they do not stumble at one of the first technical barriers when dealing with major retailers.

The problem must be fairly extensive, claimed Bodycote’s food advisory team leader Fiona Scholes. “It’s difficult to know how many retailers are approached or how many small companies are approached by retailers and then they can’t supply them for various technical as well as volume reasons,” she said.

“Our scheme is trying to help and support these small businesses,” she added. “The way that retailers are going, they want to use [small suppliers] but [the suppliers] don’t have the technical skills or ability to put specifications and labelling together in a manner that retailers are happy with.”

Retail Ready’s modular format means that manufacturers can choose those elements which best suit their needs and resources. Technical assistance is available to enable them to make safe and legal product while scaling up to production, meeting the minimum legal and technical requirements for retail supply and meeting critical paths for product launch.

Modules include those covering recipe composition; specification; and labelling/pack copy. However, guidance is also available on factory and process control, to help suppliers decide which level of factory and process control they need: whether safe and legal, Safe and Local Supplier Approval (SALSA) or full British Retail Consortium (BRC) certification. In addition, due diligence testing and retail specification input services are also available.

Bodycote is doing a pilot project on Retail Ready for a small award winning firm in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex called Prosperity Brownies, which is trying to get its products into larger retail outlets in its area. It has also advised another firm, Frontier Foods, from start-up on aspects such as factory layout to production.