Risks in Drink Packing
Hi,
We are a very small business (3 FTE staff) who make a concentrated sugar syrup for dilution into beverages. We are now looking to get a contract manufacturer to make specially flavoured products, as we do not have the in house flavour knowledge to do this.
I am responsible for reviewing our food safety plan and wanted to ask about new risks to ensure our packing and storage will not impact product safety or quality. Some information:
- product will have pH <4.0
- product will have Aw < 0.85
- product will be delivered ready to pack- no pasteurization etc required. Heating may impact some of the natural ingredients.
- ~ 6 month shelf life. This is what is advised by contract manufacturer
- sugar based product with flavour, colour and preservatives
- ambient storage temperature
- cold fill (no heat)
- 10-20L batches
Current risks identified are regarding spoilage organisms from an unclean environment and physical hazards from contaminated packaging. No pathogenic organisms identified.
I have worked in QA before (very low risk product or products with a cook/kill step) but never with beverages. Thank you for any guidance or resources you can share.
Seeing as this will be a contract manufacturer for you, I'd put it on their plate to provide you with all the documentation and evidence that they are mitigating any risk on their end. I would discuss with them what your concerns are with them and have them provide documentation and support for how they will mitigate these concerns. Develop a questionnaire that goes over basic food safety elements to assess what they have in place. Ask for a 3rd party audit certificate and if you are GFSI, I would ask them to be as well. I would also conduct an audit of their facility so that you can see the operation, their programs and documentation and their facility. Work together with them so that you can feel comfortable and confident that they are mitigating all risks and concerns you have and that they are comfortable in knowing what your expectations are. They should know what the main risks are in their industry and be able to convey this to you. Hope this helps.
Hi Scotty_SQF, thanks for your reply, it is helpful. We are only HACCP certified and the supplier is also HACCP supplied.
We will be doing the final pack from bulk to the customer size container. There is a risk of contamination (from the environment or personnel) and this is also where I am unsure.
Would it be normal practice to rinse/wash and sanitise bottles before filling? This is probably the main area where I don't know if I am assessing the risk correctly. The bottle supplier we have in mind has ISO, but then there is the risk of contamination posed by transport, storage and even staff handling.
Would it be normal practice to rinse/wash and sanitise bottles before filling? This is probably the main area where I don't know if I am assessing the risk correctly. The bottle supplier we have in mind has ISO, but then there is the risk of contamination posed by transport, storage and even staff handling.
It's going to depend on the format in which the bottles are supplied to you, but in many cases best-practice would be a combined wash and inversion, as that also address the risk of foreign body presence arriving in the empty bottles.
Given your product profile, getting your preservative type and levels right is potentially going to be relevant for quality / shelf life, even if not for pathogen control. I don't know how the regulator in Aus views moulds, but even at <0.85 aw there is some potential for growth, and here in the UK I believe there have been a few instances where regulatory bodies took the view that mould growth presents a food safety risk via the potential for mycotoxin formation. Similarly there are some yeasts that could theoretically cope in this type of product, and fermenting bottles exploding is something you want to avoid ;)
Your product is perhaps at the peripheries of typical soft drink profiles due to the relatively low water activity, but this might be a useful read: https://www.research...lication_detail
Edit: That link was supposed to go direct to a full PDF but doesn't seem to work as intended, so I've attached it to this post instead.
Attached Files
Thank you PHruit. We have flagged to do testing for yeast and mould and TPC so great to know I am on the right track.
PS. love your username!