With its new production plant for food-grade potassium chloride in Zielitz, K+S KALI GmbH has invested in the growing market for high-quality salts. The objective is to further solidify the company’s leading position in the Health Care & Food and the pharmaceutical segments. An important step to achieving this goal was the successful certification, in compliance with the International Featured Standards in December 2009.
This new certification is a very important one, as in future all food grade production will use only additives that certifiably comply with accepted food grade standards. With this IFS-certificate, K+S KALI GmbH will continue to expand its position in the food sector. With its KCl Food Grade product, the company already has a strong position on the market, and will now become the world’s largest manufacturer, setting the quality standard for KCl Food Grade. Worldwide only few providers are able to function as manufacturers with internationally recognised certificates and as marketer. By the way: The new KCl Food Grade plant at the Zielitz works is considered the most advanced of its kind.
From the very beginning of the planning process for the KCL Food Grade production plant, its inclusion into the K+S KALI GmbH Quality Management System was taken into account. “On national and international markets customers expect a QM-system, and they are prepared to conduct appropriate delivery audits at our locations”, says Klaus-Dieter Handor, Quality Management Officer of the K+S KALI GmbH. For quite a number of years, TÜV NORD has been the Zielitz location’s QM-partner of choice. Already in June 2009, this agency certified the new production plant, in accordance with Quality Norm DIN EN ISO 9001:2000.
Additionally, overseas-customers expect their suppliers to conduct a so-called “Third Party Audit”, in compliance with valid “Food Standards”. Handor: “In order to be accepted and approved as supplier overseas, certification by an internationally recognised agency was necessary. For this, K+S KALI GmbH selected the internationally renowned SGS Institut Fresenius.
As the TÜV NORD had already been charged with a pre-audit in accordance with IFS, ideal conditions for the actual third-party audit had already been created, which was completed in a very short time, - “as our customers pushed for fastest-possible IFS-certification”, said Klaus-Dieter Handor.
This is why already in December 2009 the SGS Institut Fresenius issued the coveted certification. “In addition to the required new documentation, we introduced, implemented and monitored a host of regulatory IFS-measures, all within a very short time,” Christian Martin, Head of Quality Management and of the Zielitz laboratory, describes the ambitious challenge. “Until then we had no experience concerning food grade standard certification at the Zielitz location. However, we received a great deal of support from our more experienced esco-colleagues, from the Bernburg sister plant,” says Martin.
Concurring with the work done at Zielitz, the Kassel office provided specific amendments to the already available documents of the Quality Management System. “For the product segment Health Care & Food we use the specific system Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points – in short, HACCP,” says Dr. Ralf Weber, Technical Applications Consulting. A specifically composed team took charge of the task, and also made sure to enhance the existing traceability systems for K+S-products.
Handor, Martin and Weber agree: Successful IFS-certification in such a short period of time was not only due to the excellent cooperation of all parties, but is also an expression of the high quality awareness of the company as a whole, and by all of its employees.
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