‘Systems, Quality Certifications Are Long-Term Investments’

American Quality Assessors (India) Pvt Ltd, an accredited audit body offering certifications such as the ISO 9001 and 14000, recently introduced three new certifications for the Indian hospitality and food processing industries. G K K Singh explains how the industry in the midst of a restructuring drive can derive valuable benefits from such certifications. Alan D’Mello reports...

Fact File
American Quality Assessors (India) Pvt Ltd functioning in India under the aegis of AQA-USA has been offering registration services since 1997. AQA (India) was earlier offering the ISO-9001 good management practice, the ISO-14000 environment practices and the QS-9000 certifications. AQA-USA, headquartered in South Carolina, USA has offices in India, Japan, Turkey, Mexico, China, Middle-East and Europe. The AQA (India) and Foodcert-NL arrangement is exclusive to the India office. It authorises AQA (India) to conduct audits on behalf of Foodcert-NL and recommend the customers for Foodcert-NL certifications.

EH&C: What are the certifications offered by your company in India?
G K K Singh: In addition to the ISO and the QS certifications, we are presently offering the registration services for following three certifications for the food chain members in India:

a) Certification for Branch Hygiene Codes (BHC) under European Standard EN-45011 for restaurants, caterers and industrial canteens. We announced this certification just 10 months ago, registrations for the same will commence shortly.

b) HACCP under European Standard EN-45012 for the food processing industry

c) EUREPGAP under European Standard EN-45011 for growers of fruits and vegetables

For the Indian market, AQA India is offering a customised and redefined entry package called the ‘Welcome Pack’, to customers who register for any of these certifications which will help a client to understand the requirements in respect of the audit and documentation expectations. We further help the client through a review and feedback on their documentation (manual).

Which kind of Indian organisations constitute your target market?
AQA (India) has clients all over the country covering many sectors of business such as food and beverage processors, hotels and hospitals, Pharmaceuticals, educational institutions etc. We already have 28 clients registered with us for HACCP and 16 growers registered with us for EUREPGAP in India.

In India, our operations are based in Hyderabad. We are strong in the southern, western and northern region of the country, eastern India is the only region we are not active in at the moment. In fact, we entered northern India only last year. In the west, Maharashtra and Gujarat are strong markets, in the south, we have a presence in all the states and in the north only Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana.

In the Netherlands, Foodcert-NL has registered 982 customers in the last one year, which includes 92 for HACCP, 265 for EUREPGAP and a whopping 625 for BHC.

What will be the total cost incurred to obtain one of your certifications?
The approximate cost of obtaining a HACCP certification (including the cost of a consultant) ranges from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh, depending on the size of the organisation. The Branch Hygiene Codes Certification would cost about Rs 50,000 to Rs 90,000 depending on the size of the establishment.

Our certifications can be available at a lower cost, for example some government bodies in India like the APEDA (Agricultural Produce Export Development Agency) offer a 25 - 50 per cent subsidy toward the cost of such certifications as per certain criteria of eligibility. Indian hospitality has no such subsidies, but we are open to offering special rates to the Indian hotel industry if it is co-promoted by an association.

In today’s cash strapped market conditions, how feasible is investing in such services for an Indian company?
System and quality certifications are long-term investments, which is why it is important to state that the recurring costs are not as high as initial cost, in fact it is about 25 per cent of the total initial cost. Depending on the size of the organisation, an assessment once in nine months is the average. Every three years a complete re-certification audit has to be done.

Initially, people do find the costs and systems a little difficult to manage as they are simply not tuned to it. However, over time they get around, two to three years is the average time taken for results to show.

Considering the value addition that a client gets due to such certifications, we feel the investment is worth it because it sets effective systems in place. Also, it will generate high level of confidence in the minds of customers leading to higher volumes of clientele. We are already offering lowest possible rates for these certifications at the introductory stage.