New Caney Beverage has been HACCP certified by Bureau Veritas

Houston, Texas, 3/31/2022. New Caney Beverage is pleased to announce that it has received HACCP certification from Bureau Veritas. This certification confirms New Caney Beverage’s commitment to producing products that meet the highest safety standards. The Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system is a standardized method of identifying, evaluating, and controlling food safety hazards.

“We are extremely proud of earning HACCP certification,” said Mr. Guillermo Amtmann, owner, and president of New Caney Beverage. “The dedication and hard work put into achieving this certification demonstrate our employees’ commitment to consistently producing safe, high-quality products. Being certified by Bureau Veritas allows us to prove our commitment to safety and sanitation on a global level.”

With this important certification, we reinforce our commitment to providing the best infrastructure and quality to better serve our customers who are looking for an option to bottle their beverages in the state of Texas.

Bureau Veritas is a world leader in laboratory testing, inspection, and certification services. Created in 1828 with 78,000 employees located in more than 1,600 offices and laboratories around the globe.

For more information about Bureau Veritas, please click here: https://www.bvna.com/

What is HACCP?

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) is an internationally well-recognized system for food safety management that enables controlling risks at every step of the manufacturing, packaging, storage, and distribution processes.

This certification means that Hazard Analysis, is a scientific process, that basically allows identifying processes that might represent possible dangers to health, and on the other hand, a control point is basically a step or a procedure that must be implemented in order to eliminate the implicit risks or to reduce them to acceptable levels.

The HACCP system can be applied to the entire food and beverage industry, and basically, it was created to guarantee the safety of food and beverages and includes the entire chain, from production to retailer, to consumer.

HACCP is very important to guarantee food safety, as well as prevent contaminated food and food-borne illness, which translates into avoiding unnecessary expenses for companies and having to do recalls because of bad food.

The HACCP program is based on GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices), and SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) which are considered prerequisites.

Without any question, HACCP has over time become an international standard to regulate the safety of food and beverages.

What specifically HACCP allows us to control?

As an example, HACCP allows us to identify the main hazards that can cause food poisoning, and those could be biological, chemical, or physical hazards that could potentially contaminate the food or beverage.

HACCP allows us to monitor and control these potential hazards at every stage, such as receiving, storing, preparing, producing, packing, and shipping.

What are the 7 principles of HACCP?

HACCP is based on the following principles:

1. List the processes and identify potential hazards.

You must be able to answer what are the main risks when receiving the ingredients from the biological, chemical, and physical points. Biologicals can be salmonella, coli, listeria, etc. Chemicals such as pesticides, lubricants, sanitizers, etc., and finally physical hazards such as an object in the food, like a piece of metal, glass, wood, or plastic, among others.

2. Identify Critical Control Points (CCPs)

A CCP is a step or procedure in which it is possible to have a control point that allows us to take measurements with the objective to eliminate or reduce risk to acceptable levels.

3. Establish the Control Limits

A critical limit is the maximum and minimum level at which a biological, chemical or physical hazard can be controlled at a certain CCP. For example, what are the minimum and maximum temperature levels allowed at each CCP point in the process?

4.-Monitor the CCPs

We need to continuously take measurements of every critical limit of each CCP control point.

5.-Establish corrective actions

There must be specified what must be done, and what the corrective actions will be if any of the control limits have been exceeded. For example, what actions should be taken if a product was exposed to temperatures higher or lower than those allowed for a certain time? Should this product be discarded or not? In a similar way, an investigation must be carried out to determine what caused the deviation, to prevent it from happening again.

6.-Verification

Are those activities that allow us to confirm that the process is working (or not working) according to the previously established plan?

7.-Documentation

A key point of the HACCP plan is the registration of information that allows to demonstration that the product was successfully manufactured in a safe way.

Why is it important to choose a co-packer and co-manufacturer that is HACCP certified?

Whenever there is mass manufacturing of any product, it is necessary to have a well-established and documented process. So basically, what needs not to be allowed is that any event that is not listed in the process could happen.

This is, for example, there must be a protocol to prevent someone who participates in the production process from not properly washing their hands, or to avoid a process to run at the wrong temperature, which may later trigger a food safety issue.

A co-packer must operate under third-party safety regulations and standards and must have a food safety and food security plan, for which HACCP is very important. HACCP is a systematic evaluation of the process and all the potential hazards that could occur related to the process.

For this reason, a written process must be in place to avoid any type of risk. That is, there have to be written procedures (Standard Operating Practices) to prevent any step in the process from being omitted or forgotten, and therefore, guarantee the quality of the final product.

How to pick a safe beverage co-packer for your project?

It is important to be sure that the co-manufacturer or co-packer you are evaluating is the best option for your project, so carefully choosing the questions you should ask is very important to resolve any concerns or questions.

The first question, we consider, can be, whether other products similar to yours, have the co-packer previously manufactured, since what you want is to know what experience they have in the specific field of the wide range of beverages that you need.

And perhaps the second question would be about certifications, and regulations, and maybe you want to know what the history of the co-packer preparing beverages similar to yours has been, or if there have been some recalls or not.

Sometimes the fact that a co-packer has had recalls is not necessarily a bad thing, but maybe is a good thing, since it means that they have already handled unexpected issues and that they have corrected them, so it does not necessarily mean that you should not work with them, but that it is good to know the history they have had.

It is important to know what your customer requirements are in terms of regulations. For example, if your distribution channel is a major chain or retailer, you should know what the regulations or requirements are that they are going to ask for you to become a potential vendor to them. Sometimes these requirements can go beyond what a normal regulatory standard is.

It is important to know what standards they require, for example, HACCP, GMP, and any GFSI standard, which are international audits and certifications that retailers use internationally, such as SQF or BRC. Or also if they may require their own audits instead of these regulatory certifications.

About New Caney Beverage

New Caney Beverage is a premier private label beverage manufacturer. Our services include but are not limited to, custom formulation, nutritional & supplemental facts labeling, packaging & label design, and co-packing solutions.

New Caney Beverage is proud to offer a wide range of co-manufacturing and co-packing services, including the ability to manufacture beverages in cans and bottles, powders in stick packs and canisters, as well as gels and thicker liquids. Some additional process features include tunnel pasteurization, flash pasteurization (HTST), in-line shrink sleeving, and tray or case packaging with bundling film, cardboard trays, or wrap-around boxes.

We help beverage brands quickly launch and get products to market with ease, from boutique-crafted drinks for small startups to well-established large corporations. We have invested in state-of-the-art equipment and our team is made of the best professionals in the business. Additional services include logo & brand design, mock-ups & prototyping, and promotional & marketing design.

Our quality control department is staffed with intelligent, precise individuals who are vigilant about the quality of products we produce.

We work with you to assess your needs and then carefully create a plan to ensure that we meet them. As a privately owned company, we also take great pride in being available at every step of the process so that we can help you adjust as needed to ensure your success. Our goal is to help you succeed by providing you with the highest quality products at an affordable price.

We are conveniently located in the northern part of the Houston suburban area, with easy access to highways communicating with the major cities in Texas. Our 4-acre plant facility includes fully monitored and secured buildings with stringent quality standards.

If you are ready to see how we can help you, contact us today to learn more about our services and how they can benefit your business!