Superior Lithographics Achieves BRC Certification for Manufacturing of Folding Cartons for Direct Contact Food Packaging
Superior’s folding carton food packaging manufacturing plant in Los Angeles, CA, recently achieved certification against the BRC Global Standard for Packaging Materials. BRC (Brand Reputation through Compliance) is a leading global quality and food safety certification program that is recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). Superior manufactures folding cartons for the food service, food processing, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries.
Los Angeles, CA, March 2, 2021. Superior’s folding carton food packaging manufacturing plant in Los Angeles, CA, recently achieved certification against the BRC Global Standard for Packaging Materials. BRC (Brand Reputation through Compliance) is a leading global quality and food safety certification program that is recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). Superior manufactures folding cartons for the food service, food processing, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries.
Upon completion of the rigorous third-party auditing process, Superior received certification for Packaging, with the scope of the certification including the manufacture, conversion and warehousing of paperboard folding carton packaging intended for use in direct and indirect food contact packaging applications.
“The detailed process required to achieve certification to the BRC Standard has made Superior more valuable to all of our customers and complements our existing Lean manufacturing environment,” said Jared Rounsevell, Quality Manager and BRC Team Leader. “After we embraced Lean and the company expanded our capabilities in the folding carton market, BRC was the next logical step.”
The BRC Global Standards are well-respected and widely used by suppliers and retailers worldwide, aiding in standardizing quality, safety, operational criteria and manufacturers’ fulfillment of legal obligations. The standards set a benchmark for good manufacturing practice. The Packaging Materials standard is also recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).
“We put together a team that focuses on standards, procedures and quality improvement to achieve BRC Certification,” said Jeff Ku, Vice President, Operations. “However, maintaining the standard requires buy-in from everyone in our organization. Our employees worked very hard to make this happen.” Initially, Superior’s BRC effort was driven by requests from Fortune 500 customers of the company but the certification will benefit all of Superior’s customers. “This shows current and prospective customers that we are a reliable company committed to producing safe, high quality packaging suitable for food contact and other critical applications,” said Ku.
“With our core values of safety, respect, quality, communication, teamwork, and creativity BRC was a natural next step”, noted Doug Rawson, the company’s founder. “For the past 10 years we have pushed our team members to embrace Lean Manufacturing principles. Our success with ingratiating Lean into Superior’s culture made the concept of becoming BRC certified easier to get buy-in from our team. The certification process was not easy, but we started with a great foundation thanks to some of the lean principles such as standardization, continuous improvement, and customer focus. Our head start was apparent since we were able to accomplish the certification within nine months from first commitment. I am thankful for the efforts of the leadership team and the frontline team members for making it happen so efficiently.”
Benefits of BRC Certification
Achieving certification against the BRC Global Standard for Packaging Materials assures customers that they are dealing with a company that reaches high levels of competence in all critical areas. Customers know the company is monitoring and continually improving product quality and safety as well as ensuring compliance with all applicable laws and governmental regulations.
About Superior Lithographics
Superior Lithographics manufactures folding carton packaging for the foodservice, food processing, and consumer packaged goods industries. Folding cartons for indirect and direct food contact include packaging for frozen foods, dry foods and beverages, along with consumer products. In addition to folding cartons production capabilities include top sheets and litho labels for conversion by corrugated box plants using high-speed late-model lithographic offset printing presses along with die-cutters and folder-gluers. The company serves the West Coast packaging market and has started in 1982 and now operates a 24/7 operation employing over 120 team members.
