CEO KTBA, a Mérieux NutriSciences Company
By now we have already entered the final months of this year. Once again the year flew by and again not without a struggle. The food industry has quite a few challenges. Besides rising costs of ingredients and energy costs, we also see challenges in the areas of inflation, price increases, recession and a war for talent. Finding the right employees and maintaining the capacity to run production remains a challenge.
At the same time, I also look back on the past year positively. With great resilience, passion and enthusiasm, the KTBA team has been able to complete great assignments in the areas of quality assurance, business assurance, labeling, auditing and digital tools. We also see that organizations value increasing the knowledge of their employees and find their way to KTBA for training. Thank you very much for your trust in us. Besides this we look back on a successful customer event with appealing topics such as food waste, sustainability, trends and digitalization and data management. This provided ‘Food 4 Thought’ for both the participants and ourselves.
The market doesn’t stand still and continues to develop in the coming year. Companies are experiencing difficulties in attracting the right QA personnel for example, and the role of QA manager is becoming broader. Besides managing quality, the QA manager is more and more involved in environment, health & safety, food fraud and integrity, food defense, the logistics chain, CSR, business optimization, to name a few. The role of the QA manager is therefore shifting towards Business Assurance manager. In this edition, we deepdive into these topics.
Supplier audits and why these are essential at Brand Masters are also addressed. These audits deliver points of improvement that keep the organization sharp, which leads to the desired product quality and securing business processes.
Last, but not least, managing food safety is even more important nowadays. Keep an eye on new regulations and standards and take timely action. For example, as of January 1, 2023, new regulations will come into force in the field of pest control and as of February 1, 2023 the audits on the new standard BRCGS Food Safety, version 9, will start. You can also read more about this and of course you are also provided with the familiar update from our knowledge center.
Happy reading!
Jeroen Sleenhoff