We don’t choose to buy from any particular country. Our prime consideration is the quality of the product and the quality of its certification. Then we consider whether the price matches the value of the two.
Our assurance: ‘SEEING IS BELIEVING’
We have made it a practice to personally validate our suppliers and meet the people who grow and manufacture Ceres products. We inspect every element of the supply chain from the farms where the ingredients are grown, the warehouses, packing/processing facilities … through to the port and how the freight agent selects the shipping container. We are determined to ensure that only high quality organic ingredients and organic manufacturing processes are used in our products.
Buying from China
China has been besieged by negative press in the last few years. Some with justification, as in the case of products like toothpaste, pet food ingredients, conventional processed foods and pesticide residues on agricultural products. China, perhaps more than other countries, has had many cases of ‘lax regulations’ and maybe even outright abuse. However, the environment has changed markedly in the past few years – the Chinese government has and continues to tighten internal regulations as they rely more and more on world markets. We support a tightening of standards around products that are imported into New Zealand to bring them in line with what we as New Zealanders would expect.
So, why do we source from China? Because we believe that not everything of Chinese origin is suspect.
True to our sourcing philosophy, Ceres purchases from a supplier only when all our criteria have been met. The first and most important is the standard of organic certification. The food crops we get from China are certified by Ecocert, IMO and B.C.S. Oko-Garantie, certification organisations that are of European origin and operating in many countries. They all certify to European Union standards. With reputable third party endorsement, we are confident that the organic criteria are being met. Moreover, no less than Noel himself, our managing director, has visited China to inspect our suppliers’ operations and has determined that the products are up to the Ceres standards. Only with this background do we begin the process of purchasing which includes the food safety standards of the product we require.
The peanuts, grains and other products we get from China have all undergone our stringent product approval process. In the case of peanuts, this ingredient is purchased raw, then processed in a certified organic facility and the finished product is re-certified by BioGro. Bio-Gro, our IFOAM affiliated certifier, conducts a paper trail examination to confirm the validity of the entire process before granting the use of the BioGro seal on our products.