SKG has always demonstrated a strong commitment to product safety.
SKG had no recorded incidents of non compliance with regulations in the area of product safety.
A significant part of our packaging is intended for the agro-food industry. For this sector the product responsibility is mainly to ensure the food contact safety of the final packaging.
Our Product Safety Department was set up to manage such issues, in particular for food contact end use. This department was accredited according to the ISO 17025 standard during 2009.
The knowledge developed has been transferred throughout all production operations of the Group in Europe and Latin America.
The department is equipped with a laboratory that tests the purity of papers, conducts research, and implements development projects in the area of food contact. Developments are driven by both legislation and by customer requests.
We follow the evolution of regulations and are very active at association level within the paper industry with regard to product safety issues.
European regulations that apply for packaging intended for food contact application have been revised and reinforced over recent years. Implementation of a Guide for Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) in paper mills and converting operations producing packaging for food applications is now required by law.
GMP that fulfils the requirements of EU regulations is now implemented at all our European paper mills. Moreover, we started to have a third party certification of the paper mills against the new standard developed at the European level (CEN standard) on management of hygiene in the production of packaging for foodstuffs.
Currently, GMP is applied to our European operations only. In Colombia legislation is being prepared and will be based on EU and FDA legislation.
Driven by customer needs, some 38% of our converting plants now have processes in place and are certified by one of the following recognised hygiene codes: BRC (British Retail Consortium), AIB (American Institute of Baking) or International Good Manufacturing Practice for Corrugated and Solidboard Packaging. It is our aim to certify all our converting plants for which this is relevant (predominantly when producing food packaging).
As a result of this central organisation, we are able to monitor our progress in performance with regard to both safety and hygiene for food and this in turn allows us to respond to any market concerns.
Our Product Safety department follows food safety alerts coming from European or National authorities. Our analyses and knowledge permit us to modify our papers in response to these alerts in the shortest possible time.
Recently, the strong involvement in product safety of the entire paper-based packaging industry has been demonstrated in the phthalate alert.
Recovered paper is the source for phthalates in the paper produced from recycled fibres. These phthalates come mainly from glues used by converting plants and packers and are, therefore, present in all recovered packaging papers at trace levels. Since 2007, our own product safety laboratory regularly assesses the concentration of phthalates in our papers intended for food contact applications. All papers produced by Smurfit Kappa mills are compliant with the strictest requirements of food contact regulations in this regard. As a result of the significant involvement of our industry with its suppliers, the concentration of di-isobutyl phthalate has been reduced by two thirds since 2007 in our fully recycled grades.