For UK food manufacturers, supplier approval is no longer a box-ticking exercise. With Natasha’s Law, BRC Global Standards, and retailer due diligence requirements all tightening, the businesses that treat supplier approval as a strategic process are the ones avoiding costly recalls and failed audits.

The challenge is that most businesses are still running their approval process through a combination of emails, spreadsheets, and shared drives. It works until it does not. What a compliant supplier approval process looks like A robust supplier approval process covers four core areas: initial qualification, ongoing monitoring, document management, and audit readiness.

Initial qualification means collecting the right information upfront including allergen declarations, specifications, certifications, and any retailer-specific requirements. The mistake most businesses make is collecting this once and never reviewing it again. Ongoing monitoring is where most processes break down

Supplier specifications change. Ingredients get reformulated. Certifications expire. Without a system that tracks expiry dates and triggers automatic renewal requests, these changes pass through undetected.A digital supplier approval platform solves this by centralising all supplier documentation and automating the renewal workflow. When a certification is approaching expiry, the supplier is prompted automatically without anyone in your team having to chase it manually.

Building your audit trail

Whether you are preparing for a BRC audit, a retailer visit, or an FSA inspection, your supplier approval process needs to produce a clear timestamped audit trail. Every approval decision, every document version, every communication with a supplier should be logged and retrievable.

Key documents your supplier approval process should collect Allergen declarations reviewed annually as a minimum. Product specifications and technical data sheets. Food safety certifications including BRC, STS, SALSA, and ISO 22000. Country of origin declarations. Modern slavery and ethical trading statements. Insurance certificates.

The businesses that manage this process well treat it as a living system and not a one-time exercise. Suppliers are re-approved on a risk-rated schedule, with high-risk suppliers reviewed more frequently than low-risk ones.

Food Trace supports this with a structured Supplier Approval process. For the standards this process is built around, see BRCGS.