ISO 9001

ISO 9000 - Quality management

The ISO 9000 family addresses various aspects of quality management and contains some of ISO’s best known standards. The standards provide guidance and tools for companies and organizations who want to ensure that their products and services consistently meet customer’s requirements, and that quality is consistently improved.

Standards in the ISO 9000 family include -

• ISO 9001:2015 - sets out the requirements of a quality management system
• ISO 9000:2015 - covers the basic concepts and language
• ISO 9004:2009 - focuses on how to make a quality management system more efficient and effective
• ISO 19011:2011 - sets out guidance on internal and external audits of quality management systems.
• ISO 9001:2015

All ISO standards are reviewed every five years to establish if a revision is required to keep it current and relevant for the marketplace. ISO 9001:2015 is designed to respond to the latest trends and be compatible with other management systems such as ISO 14001.

This standard is based on a number of quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach and continual improvement. Using ISO 9001:2015 helps ensure that customers get consistent, good quality products and services, which in turn brings many business benefits.

Rain-Forest Alliance (Tea)

The Rain-forest Alliance, a Global Network which works to conserve biodiversity

Rain-forest Alliance Certified™ farms use methods that protect the health of farmers, their livelihoods, their land and the surrounding waterways. Through their training and certification programs, they promote farming techniques designed to protect the land for future generations.

The Rain-forest Alliance promotes sustainable farming methods that lead to increased profits and better working conditions. In order to earn the Rain-forest Alliance Certified ™ seal, tea farms must undergo annual audits against a rigorous standard with detailed environmental, economic, and social criteria that work together to promote their holistic vision of sustainability.

In July 2015, Sri Lankan Tea obtained certification from Rain-forest Alliance covering a number of tea estates, demonstrating its compliance with rigorous global standards relating to the well-being of its associates, their families and the environment.

Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP)

ETP works with tea producers and smallholder farmers in their members’ supply chains, to help them meet internationally recognized social and environmental standards.

They provide training on issues that many producers struggle with, e.g. factory health and safety, safe use of agrochemicals, human resource management, and environmental management.

ETP also runs training programs and projects that tackle sensitive, complex, and deep-rooted issues that cannot be addressed sufficiently well through auditing and certification. These include: reducing harassment and discrimination of female workers/minority groups in the work place; improving the lives of young people in tea communities and reducing exploitation; improving living conditions and nutrition on tea estates; working towards living wage and benefits, and increasing climate change resilience.

The ETP currently has 29 member globally, of which Sri Lanka is one of them!

ETP focuses on 4 key areas -

Raising Standards - As with all work environments it’s important that tea estates and processing factories conform to good social and environmental standards. Without them workers can be subjected to unsafe working conditions, unfair human resource practices.

ETP helps tea producers and smallholder farmers meet international social and environmental standards. Their work makes tea estates and processing factories better and safer for the people that grow and produce tea.

Tea Workers - There are a number of issues such as discrimination of women/minority groups, poor nutrition, and a lack of opportunities for young people (particularly girls) that traditional auditing and certification programs are unable to address. Many of these problems go beyond the boundary of tea estates and are widespread in countries that grow and produce tea.

ETP works with a range of carefully selected partner organizations to address these issues.

Smallholder Tea Farmers - It’s estimated that about 70% of global tea production is from 8 million smallholder farmers in Africa and Asia.

While smallholder production is increasingly important to world tea supply, many smallholders struggle to make a decent living from tea due to a variety of reasons. These include small farms and poor/infertile land, using out-dated and unproductive farming methods, and a lack of finance to invest in input materials such as fertilizer and new tea bushes.

ETP steps in to provide training and support that helps tea farmers improve their yields, produce better quality tea, gain access to affordable finance, and meet social and environmental criteria required by export markets. Much of this work focuses on education around good practice farming and pruning and plucking cycles.

Climate & Environment – ETP helps tea producers improve their environmental management systems so that resources such as soil, water, ecosystems, and wildlife are protected.

The organization also assists the tea sector to understand the implications of climate change and maintain tea production in the face of changing weather patterns and growing conditions.

Control Union Certification

Control Union is a global network of inspection operations and dedicated laboratories, with their specialty being Independent worldwide cargo surveying and superintendence.

Through innovative solutions, specialized services and product knowledge, they offer complete packages for logistics, quality and quantity management. From the country of origin to the final destination.

CUC services also feature a wide range of programmes in agriculture, food, feed, forest products, textiles and bio energy.

Key programme issues are food safety, sustainability, recycling, footprint and social aspects.

Control Union Certifications focus on customized (sustainable) programmes, and help set-up, implementation and running of these programmes on a global scale, using a network of dedicated experts who are familiar with social, environmental and economic auditing along with the practices of farmers, foresters, processors and traders.

Certified in BRC, FSSC 22000, HACCP and ISO 22000, a team of highly professional auditors is dedicated to giving you the service laid out in our policy; to be a well-established, high-quality, independent and reliable service provider.

Ceylon Tea

Ceylon Tea is grown and produced according to uncompromising, traditional methods and standards since 1880.

Quality Certified by the Government -The name ‘Ceylon Tea’ and the famous Lion logo that goes with it indicates the tea grown, manufactured and packed entirely in Sri Lanka, adhering to strict quality standards laid down and administered by the Sri Lanka Tea Board.

The Cleanest tea in the world – Sri Lanka retains its position as the ‘Best in Class’ producer of Quality Tea, considered by the Technical Committee of the ISO as the cleanest tea in the world.

‘Ozone friendly’ Ceylon Tea- Sri Lanka has implemented various measures to comply with environment related international conventions & agreements and secured the place of becoming the first tea beverage to be certified globally as being ozone friendly.

Ceylon Tea is Ethical – The Industry is well regulated with a unionized workforce that is governed by a collective labor agreement.

Original Orthodox Tea – Adhering to the Orthodox, age-old tea manufacturing process.

Freshness – Handpicked tea preserves the quality, freshness and inherent aroma of the tea.

Support – Ceylon Tea encourages choosing 100% organic and fair-trade tea, which in turn encourages supporting the small-scale farms and farmers.

European GMP

Good manufacturing practices (GMP) are the practices required in order to conform to the guidelines recommended by agencies that control authorization and licensing for manufacture and sale of food, drug products, and active pharmaceutical products. These guidelines provide minimum requirements that a pharmaceutical or a food product manufacturer must meet, to assure that the products are of high quality and do not pose any risk to the consumer or public.

Regulatory agencies (including the FDA in the U.S. and regulatory agencies in many European nations) are authorized to conduct unannounced inspections, though some are scheduled. FDA routine domestic inspections are usually unannounced, but must be conducted according to 704(a) of the FD&C Act (21 USCS § 374), which requires that they are performed at a "reasonable time".

Courts have held that any time the firm is open for business is a reasonable time for an inspection.

ISO 9001: 2008

ISO 9001: 2008 is an international standard related to quality management system, applicable to any organization from all types of business sectors and activities.

When fully adopted, these principles can help improve your organizational performance:

Customer focus- organizations depends on their customers, and therefore need to shape activities around the fulfillment of market need

Leadership - is needed to provide unity of purpose and direction

Involvement of people- creates an environment where people become fully involved in achieving the organization's objectives

Process approach - to achieve organizational objectives, resources and activities need to be managed as processes, with an understanding of how the outputs of one process affects the inputs of another

System approach to management - the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization depends on a systematized approach to work activities

Continual improvement - adopting this as a part of everyday culture is a key objective for an organization

Fact based decision-making - effective decisions are based on the logical and intuitive analysis of data and factual information

Mutually beneficial supplier relationships - such relationships will enhance the ability to create value.

Benefits of ISO 9001:2008

• Involves Top management in the improvement of the Quality management System.
• Facilitates the organization to become a customer-focused organization.
• Ensures sustained customer satisfaction.
• Increases the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization through continual improvement in systems, products & services quality.

The Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI)

The Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) is a professional association of key individuals and groups from government, industry and academia, which promotes the use, and recycling of biodegradable polymeric materials (via composting).

The BPI is open to any materials and products that demonstrate (via scientifically proven techniques) that their products are completely biodegradable in approved composting facilities.

BPI accomplishes its goals with three key components:

Education

Informing consumers, generators and municipal and industrial composters of the benefits and availability of biodegradable and compostable materials.

Adoption of Scientifically Based Standards

Promoting responsible use of the BPI Compostable Logo for any product which meets the requirements in ASTM D6400 or D6868, specifications based on more than 8 years of research by suppliers, composters and academia.

Alliances with Other Organizations

Working with other organizations to further the use and recovery of biodegradable materials, including harmonization of standards around the world.

International Standards ASTM 6400, EN 13432

The ASTM D6400 is currently the ultimate test for a biodegradable/compostable product’s ability to decompose in ideal composting conditions.

This certification covers specifications that are required to determine if plastics and products made from plastics will compost satisfactorily, including biodegrading at a rate comparable to known compostable materials.

This test method is equivalent to ISO 17088.