Certifications, per plant

A certificate names the company that holds it. Ours are held by individual plants, so we publish them that way — we never claim a group-level certification, because under IAF MD 1:2023 no certification body can issue one to companies that merely share ownership.

There are four kinds of row above, and the difference matters more than the count. A row marked Verifiable carries its certificate number, its certified scope and its expiry date — take the number to the issuer and check it without involving us. A row marked Historic was issued against an edition of its standard that has since been superseded: ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 were withdrawn in 2018, ISO 22000:2005 in 2021. No certification body maintains a certificate against a withdrawn edition, so a historic row should not be treated as currently valid until we produce a current one. We keep them listed because the systems were genuinely implemented and audited — not because they prove anything about today. A row marked Expired has passed the expiry date printed on it. A renewed certificate carries a new number, so until we hold one, an expired row says only that the system was certified once, not that it is today. A row marked Held is a certificate or licence the plant has shown us only where its number cannot be read, so we publish its name and nothing else. Give it no weight until we can show you the number.

More certificates is not better certificates. Qisheng's three can be checked this minute; every other row above says, in its status, why it does not count today. We are not going to flatten that into a badge count. Fewer and checkable beats more and unverifiable, and if you only read one column above, read the scope.

A certificate covers an activity, not a company. Every scope shown above is the scope printed on the certificate itself — where a certificate is in Chinese only, the English is our translation, with the printed original beside it. Where your product falls outside it, the honest reading is that the certificate tells you how that plant is run and nothing about your item specifically. We would rather you heard that from us than worked it out later.

What we do not hold. Packaging buyers commonly ask for BRCGS Packaging Materials, FSSC 22000 with packaging scope, or SQF, plus FDA 21 CFR 177.1520 for US food contact and a social audit such as SMETA or amfori BSCI. We hold none of these today. If your specification requires one, say so early and we will tell you honestly whether we can serve you.