Challenges

Traceability is an essential requirement to be able to recall products that are not safe to eat or have non-conformaties that affect the product’s properties. Rapid product recall and sharing information are crucial if we are to prevent or minimise an outbreak of illness caused by a product.

A product recall is when a product that does not conform to food safety standards has reached the end consumer and need to be removed from the market. A product withdrawal is when a product with the same characteristics is removed from the supply chain before it reaches the end consumer.

Our ambitions in this area

The Group’s ambitions are to take preventive action and have zero product recalls.

How we take action / What action has been taken

Lerøy has established product recall procedures that specify in detail what to do if a non-conformity is detected in a product once it has left the company. Product recalls are defined according to the type of non-conformity and the risk category. Lerøy has also established both central and local emergency preparedness groups to manage product withdrawals. This allows us to develop the routines and competencies required for efficient product withdrawals.

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KPI:  Traceability

In recent years, Lerøy has invested in technology to receive analysis results for products more rapidly. With this new technology, the results of analyses are sent directly to a system from the lab, providing us with immediate notification of any non-conformities in analysis results.

Such technology, combined with our accumulated experience of food safety and preventive action, are important in our efforts to achieve our goal of zero product recalls. Another important point is follow-up of suppliers, established routines to ensure that all input factors and ingredients are in accordance with specification and do not contaminate our products.

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KPI:  Supplier evaluation

Policy:  Food safety

Every year, we conduct fictional product recall drills to verify that our systems work, are efficient, that we have access to essential information, internal and external competencies and that all parties receive satisfactory information. Measures to prevent this from happening again and finding the root cause must also be described

Lerøy have the capacity to obtain information allowing us to withdraw or recall any product from the market within four hours. In 2020, the Group recorded zero recalls of Lerøy products and three product withdrawals. All three product withdrawals related to labelling errors, where the shelf life was either incorrect or too long.

These deviations were caused by human error during manual registration of the date formats for the labelling system. Action taken to prevent repetition: the date formats are now transferred electronically from the ERP system to a printer, eliminating the potential for human error.

How to measure our impact

All product recalls and withdrawals are recorded in the company’s quality system, LQMS, by all Group companies, and statistics are monitored centrally. If any recall occur an action plan finding the rout cause and actions to eliminate it must be described and followed up in the system.

We have a target of 0 recalls since this has the highest impact on the market, no target has been set for the number of withdrawals as these are products that have not reached the market and are proof that our tracking routines and control work.

Action taken due to results per KPI

Lerøy is constantly on the lookout for new technology and ways to improve existing working routines to avoid having to recall products from the market. Product recalls have a negative impact on consumer confidence in our brand.

Over the years to come, Lerøy will work on the development of a production information system (PIM/PLM) to digitalise a large volume of the information to be managed for a product recall. With this system, all the information regarding a product can be identified with one press of a key on the keyboard, without having to rely on manual operations in different systems.

Targets per KPI and Results per KPI