Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), the body vested with the responsibility of standardising and regulating the quality of all products in Nigeria, has issued ISO 22000:2005 certificate to La Casera Company, producer of La Casera fruit drink.
This certificate puts the company at par with international companies. With the certificate, the company’s product is guaranteed to its customers. The certificate assists any company with it to sell its product anywhere in the world without any body doubting its safety. It means that the company has all the best manufacturing practices.
Adeku Emmanuel, the quality assurance manager for La Casera, told BusinessDay while acknowledging the certificate that it took the company nine months to achieve the feat, saying “unlike ISO 2001, which is generic for all the industry, this one is peculiar to the food industry, and I am delighted that within the shortest period of time we have achieved it.”
The certificate is a guarantee a company puts in place to ensure that if it produces, for instance, 10 million bottles it means that every bottle is safe for consumption.
According to Adeku, the process involves so many things in terms of infrastructural and human development, as “it involves the factory, the design layout, the equipment, the people and we need to work with the customers because presently quality is defined by the customer requirement.
“We have made some changes in the factory and bought new equipment which has less of human interaction and this involves automation. You must ensure that what is coming in as raw material should not come in contact with finished product, and to achieve that we embarked on changes in some layout.”
The quality assurance manager, who said La Casera employs about 300 staff, further said some of the company’s staff went for international training and took examination where they were tested on their knowledge on the newly purchased equipment and discipline.
Also last week, the company rewarded some of its staff for high performance.
