Constantia again one step ahead in quality/product safety - New Hygiene Standard EN 15593 for production of food packaging successfully audited at Constantia Nusser, Constantia Patz and Teich.
Increasing market demands on hygiene and food safety have led to the development of numerous individual standards like BRC/IoP, IFS, HACCP, ISO22000, FPA SAFE, AIB etc. That has put the packaging producers into a difficult situation in two ways:
- The majority of those standards is focused on food production and is only partly applicable to packaging production
- Every customer has different preferences or requirements concerning respective certifications resulting in the acquisition of true a portfolio of certificates.
In order to overcome this the DIN (German institute for Standardization) has launched a working group for elaborating a common standard for hygiene/product safety for food packaging. The final result was the official publication of the EN15593 in early 2008. Being part of the working group Constantia Flexibles has been able to support with hands-on experience from the future user side.
Being the trend-setter…
In addition to the regular certification audits at Constantia Nusser, Constantia Patz and Teich the requirements of the new EN 15593 have been checked with minimal additional effort for the auditors. As all three sites have been assessed as compliant with the requirements, they therefore have been awarded a certificate of conformity for EN15593 – the FIRST ones in our industry.
The mid-term concept…
Being a big player in the packaging market we as Constantia Flexibles want to promote EN 15593 with our key customers. The mid-term vision is to establish it as a market standard for our industry and replace or at least minimize all other certifications for hygiene/product safety.
Manfred Böswart/Martin Krapfenbauer
