“We have experienced exponential growth here in the last three years, and with the next line coming in later in 2009 we can expect even bigger and better things well into the future,” Gamble told Canadian Packaging on a recent visit to the ultra-clean, highly sanitary facility boasting multiple product and process safety accreditations—ranging from the GFTC (Guelph Food Technology Centre) Gold Certification for food safety to the C-TPAT (Custom-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) listing for prioritizing cross-border food shipments into the U.S.
Adds Gamble: “The company has also recently become SQF 2000 ( Safe Quality Food )-approved, making it compliant with Global Food Safety Initiative.
“This was a very rigorous audit that seems to set the new ‘Gold Standard’ that the retailers are now demanding from their food suppliers” says Gamble, pointing out that Protenergy is one of very few aseptic packers anywhere processing both high- and low-acid products, with the latter requiring much more stringent controls to ensure optimal product safety.
“Having all these regularly-audited certifications is essential for us to maintain our co-packing business,” Gamble asserts.
For a big-name company to entrust its brands to a small manufacturer like us, having all our qualifications together is key to marketing ourselves as a dependable business partner.”
“The big food manufacturers out there are not going to jeopardize their trade-marks with co-packers who can’t meet their own stringent internal quality standards,” adds senior vice-president of supply chain and contract manufacturing Kenneth Uyede.
“But once we have obtained the necessary qualifications to earn their initial trust, it became progressively easier to grow our business with both new and existing customers.”
Gamble says he has become a big fan of the aseptic packaging process that provides one-year shelf-life for the boxed products made by Protenergy.
“It is a unique, continuous-filling operation with low heat-treating of the product,” says Gamble, “meaning less risk of vitamin degradation in our juice products [and] the machines’ reliability and safety is second to none.”
Moreover, packaging and shipping the product in snug-fitting, stackable, lightweight paperboxes instead of glass jars or metal cans yields numerous environmental and suppy-chain benefits, says Gamble, pointing out that shipping a full trailer-load of product containing 40,000 filled Tetra Pak boxes is a rough equivalent of sending out 10 to 12 full trailers packed with glass containers of similar product.
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