Our plants in Radom, Jawor, Świętochłowice, and Stadtilm have been certified as meeting the requirements of the IFS HPC standard. Audits have been carried out since November. Accredited auditors verified legal compliance and checked whether the highest standards of product safety and quality are met. All four factories in Poland and Germany received the highest marks and were certified for another year of operation. We have also successfully passed the GMP certification.
IFS HPC and GMP are international safety and quality standards for consumer products. Radom and Jawor were first audited for compliance with the IFS HPC standard in 2011, Stadtilm – in 2018, and Świętochłowice – in 2019. Radom received the GMP certificate in 2017. Świętochłowice was certified in 2020.
For years, we have been building strong own brands characterised by the highest quality of the ingredients, improved recipes as well as stable and safe production confirmed by external auditors. For our customers and business partners, independent certification is a guarantee that the product meets the safety and legality requirements in Poland and the EU. We ensure constant and repeatable quality of the products, minimise risk, and reduce costs of complaints, returns, and product recalls by taking preventive and improvement measures on a continuous and regular basis, said Magdalena Mielimonka, Vice President of Global Cosmed S.A.
The International Featured Standard Household and Personal Care (abbreviated as IFS HPC) responds to the increasing demands of retail chains for quality and safety for the final consumer. It covers a number of areas relevant to business management, quality, and safety, including:
- Responsibilities of the management
- Quality management system
- Resource management
- Planning and production process
- Measurement, analysis, and corrective measures
- Incident management
- In terms of health and safety, it includes:
- Plant hygiene
- Staff hygiene
- Specific requirements for the company’s infrastructure.
The audit reviewed the compliance of quality, production, and warehouse documentation, employee training, production hygiene conditions, waste management system, and pest control. Importantly, the components tested were assessed as meeting the specific requirements of the customers of our products.
A Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) certification, particularly important for the cosmetics industry, ensures the integrity of a company’s manufacturing process and compliance with health and safety regulations.
The auditing process involved employees from the following departments: Production, Quality, R&D, Warehousing, Purchasing, Health and Safety, and H&R, as well as plant management and employees responsible for various stages of the production and warehouse process. Thank you for your solid work and congratulations on passing the audit.
In addition to the IFS HPC and GMP standards, all plants are certified to ISO 9001: 2015.