Grade A or We Will Not Work With You: Why BRCGS Grade Demands From Customers Miss the Point

By Robert Low, Lead Management System Specialist and BRCGS Approved Trainer

There is a line that appears in supplier approval criteria across the industry, and every time I see it, it grates: we will only work with sites holding BRCGS grade A or above. I have always disliked this demand, and having sat on every side of the table, auditing, training and running manufacturing, I want to set out why, because I think the industry has talked itself into treating grades as something they were never designed to be.

Certificated Is Certificated

Start with what certification actually means. BRCGS would not certify a site with critical issues. If a site fails the statement of intent of a Fundamental requirement, or racks up non-conformities beyond the protocol thresholds, there is no certificate. Full stop. So every certificated site, whether it walked away with an AA or a C, has demonstrated a functioning product safety and quality system to an accredited certification body against the same standard. The grade B site holds exactly the same certificate as the grade AA site. What differs is a snapshot of the number of findings raised on one particular day, most of which will be minor observations, and all of which the site is required to correct with evidence before the certificate is even issued.

The ISO 22716 Double Standard

Here is where the logic really falls apart. The same customers demanding grade A from their BRCGS suppliers will happily accept ISO 22716 certification from another supplier without a second question. But 22716 is certificated or not, there is no grade. A 22716 site could have carried a major non-conformity and a long tail of minors through its audit, and the customer sees only one word: certificated. So a BRCGS grade B site, which by definition passed with a modest number of findings all closed with evidence, gets rejected, while a pass or fail certificate that hides its findings entirely sails through approval. That is not risk management, it is inconsistency dressed up as rigour.

If You Are the Customer: What a Grade Is Actually For

None of this means grades are useless, far from it, and if you are a customer reading this, here is the reframe. A grade is a level within the certificated standard, and its real value is as a gauge of continuous improvement over time, not as a one-day entry bar. A single grade tells you how one audit went. A run of grades tells you a story. A supplier moving from C to B to A across three audit cycles is demonstrating exactly the improvement culture you want in your supply chain, and is arguably a better long-term partner than a site that scraped an A once and plateaued. A steady AA year after year tells you the system is consistent, not lucky. And a sudden drop from A to C is not a reason to delist, it is a reason to pick up the phone, ask what happened and review the response. Used that way, as trend data and a conversation prompt, the grade becomes genuinely useful. Used as a cliff edge, it punishes honesty on audit day and tells your suppliers that the appearance of perfection matters more than the practice of improvement.

The Better Demand

If a customer genuinely wants assurance beyond the certificate, there is a proportionate way to get it: where a supplier scores below grade A, ask to review their corrective and preventive action plan, and satisfy yourself the findings were properly addressed. That gets you real insight into how the site responds to problems, which tells you far more about a supplier than a letter ever will. I have written separately about what non-conformities actually tell you and what customers should be asking certificated suppliers for.

And if you are a site on the receiving end of a grade demand, I help sites respond to customer requirements with exactly this argument, evidence and CAPA package included. Buttons below.