IN Brief:
- Nobelus' Elgin facility achieved BRCGS Packaging Materials AA certification following an announced third-party audit.
- Preparation included strengthened hygiene, traceability, supplier approval, regulatory compliance, and material release controls.
- The September audit took place under Packaging Materials Issue 7 and updated BRCGS requirements effective from August 2026.
Nobelus has secured BRCGS Packaging Materials AA certification for its Elgin, Illinois, facility following a third-party audit covering manufacturing processes, incoming materials, hygiene, and the release of finished packaging materials.
The certification was issued on 3 September following an announced audit. Nobelus said it was the company’s first BRCGS food safety audit, with the AA grade representing the highest rating available through the announced audit route.
Preparation involved strengthening hygiene controls, traceability, supplier approval, regulatory compliance, and material release procedures. Those areas extend the assessment beyond whether a particular packaging film meets its physical specification and into the systems used to receive, handle, manufacture, identify, approve, and despatch material.
That distinction matters for food packaging because technical performance and production control are separate requirements. A film may provide the specified barrier, seal, appearance, or mechanical properties while the factory still needs systems capable of preventing mix-ups, contamination, unauthorised substitutions, or loss of traceability.
BRCGS Packaging Materials is used by packaging manufacturers and customers as an independently audited framework for product safety, quality, and operational controls. Certification requires a site to be assessed against the current standard by an approved certification body rather than relying solely on its own internal quality procedures.
Nobelus’ audit falls under Packaging Materials Issue 7, the current version of the standard. BRCGS published Issue 7 in October 2024, with audits beginning in April 2025 following the transition period.
The framework was updated again this year to align a number of BRCGS standards with the Global Food Safety Initiative’s 2024 benchmarking requirements. Revised Packaging Materials position statements became effective for audits conducted from 10 August 2026, placing the September Nobelus audit after that date.
Traceability is one of the practical controls for packaging suppliers. Food manufacturers and converters may need to identify material source and manufacturing history quickly if a defect, compliance question, or contamination concern appears after production. Incoming materials, manufacturing batches, finished rolls, and customer deliveries therefore need to remain linked through usable records.
Supplier approval extends that control upstream. Flexible packaging materials can depend on polymers, coatings, adhesives, treatments, or other inputs from external manufacturers. Changes in those materials can alter product performance or regulatory status, meaning the packaging supplier’s own controls depend partly on the consistency of companies further back in the chain.
Material release is the corresponding control at the other end of production. Visually similar rolls can have different structures, treatments, thicknesses, or intended applications. Formal release procedures reduce the risk of product moving to customers before the required manufacturing and quality checks are complete.
Nobelus supplies films and related materials into label and flexible packaging markets, including products intended for food packaging applications. Its Elgin operation therefore sits upstream of converters and food manufacturers that may rely on both technical documentation and the supplier’s manufacturing controls when approving a material.
BRCGS certification does not, however, make every material from a certified site automatically suitable for every food contact application. Individual packaging structures still need the relevant regulatory documentation and have to be selected for the temperatures, products, processing conditions, and markets in which they will be used.
The same distinction applies to recyclability or barrier claims. Site certification provides an audited framework for controlling manufacture and product safety; it does not replace application-specific evidence around a film’s environmental or technical performance.
For food manufacturers and converters, the practical value of a recognised certification scheme is partly that it provides a common starting point for supplier approval. Customers can still impose their own technical and commercial requirements, but they do not have to reconstruct the supplier’s complete quality-management assessment independently.
The corresponding obligation for Nobelus is to maintain those controls between audits. Traceability, hygiene, supplier approval, and product release procedures have to remain effective when orders are urgent, personnel change, materials are substituted, equipment stops, or production pressure increases.
That makes the AA grade an operating commitment rather than the end of a certification project. The Elgin facility has demonstrated the required controls during an announced audit; the longer-term measure will be whether those systems remain embedded in routine film production and material handling after the certification exercise has passed.
