What is the BRC IOP Standard?

What is the BRC IOP standard?

The BRC IOP standard (Institute of Packaging) was developed to help food manufacturers and retailers meet their legal responsibilities on product safety. It gives retailers a common basis for auditing the suppliers that provide packaging materials for food products, and in doing so it protects the end consumer.

Under BRC IOP, packaging for safe food consumption must pass through appropriate control systems and analytical checks before being used on private-label products. A food package has two load-bearing jobs: to protect the food against contamination and to preserve the food's efficacy and safety through its entire shelf life. When the wrong material is selected, that same package can itself transfer unwanted chemical substances into the product. Any time food comes into contact with a non-food material, there is a possibility of chemical migration or contamination.

Food can sit in its packaging for months or even years, so the migration risk is highest for materials that remain in continuous contact with the product. Good packaging is reliable, performs its intended function fully, and does not transfer migration components into the food it touches. Migration is a material chemical-hazard consideration for food producers, which is why packaging materials should be treated like any other raw material, ingredient, or processing aid, and assessed for the risks they introduce alongside the benefits they deliver.

BRC/IoP was issued in the United Kingdom, so it is particularly relevant for packaging suppliers whose food-manufacturer customers export to the UK. The scope is wider than direct UK exports, however. UK-origin retailers and mass-market operators active in Turkey also expect the standard, and packaging suppliers serving UK-origin food manufacturers fall within it too. Suppliers of packaging to companies that sell to UK chain supermarkets, wherever they are based, produce under the BRC/IoP packaging standard as a condition of doing business.