Traceability for Packing Materials

Hi, my company is a plastic packaging manufacturer that is trying to get BRC certification for packaging materials. We made food contact plastic trays, put them into plastic liners and those into cardboard boxes. From what I can understand from the Standard, we should only need to provide traceability for raw materials. Are the liners and cardboard boxes considered raw materials? I guess a definition of what is considered "raw materials" would be helpful. I am quite new to this.

We have begun to trace our liners and boxes in preparation of certification, but I would like to verify if this is part of the standard as it is quite difficult for us to do so.

I appreciate any advice. Thank you.

maybe i'm wrong but as far as i can understand it is raw materials for your finished product i.e., plastic trays.

The raw materials are materials used to make your finished product. For eg: cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt, crude oil, cpet sheets, recycled plastic etc,.

It's good that you are also tracing liners and boxes but those wouldn't constitute as raw materials rather packaging material for your finished goods.

^^^ Agreed.  The liners and boxes are part of your finished product, so no need to include these in a trace for raw materials.  And your traceback for raw materials should only be one step, so tracking by lot coding of which raw materials you used to make a batch of trays along with where those materials were purchased from is sufficient.

When you get into your mock recalls and finished materials trace, you'll go one step forward and backward:  show all the raw materials that went into your trays, and show where you distributed those trays.  The liners will need to be included in that exercise, but I've never had someone make me or find fault in not tracing my secondary packaging (the box you're shipping the liner filled with trays in).