Welcome to Amtivo in Ireland – formerly Certification Europe, EQA and BQAI

BRCGS START

Certification in Ireland

Practical, achievable food safety certification for small and growing food businesses, provided by the #1 certification body for BRCGS START in Ireland*

Request a Quote

Enter your details below to get started on your journey to certification.

Formal certification can feel like something built for bigger businesses, designed for factories with quality departments – not founders juggling production, customers and daily operations. 

BRCGS START is designed to prove otherwise: a food safety certification programme for small and growing businesses, with two achievable levels designed around how smaller companies run. 

*More Irish sites hold their BRCGS START certification with Amtivo than with any other certification body. 

What is BRCGS START? 

BRCGS START is a certification programme which recognises and encourages the development of food safety systems in smaller sites where food safety management may still be maturing. It was developed in line with the expectations of the full BRCGS Global Standard for Food Safety and the GFSI Global Markets Programme; as such, it’s recognised and supported by many leading brands and retailers as evidence of a developing business taking food safety seriously. 

The current programme is Issue 2 (published in 2023) and offers certification at two levels: 

  • Basic: Focused on the fundamentals – the hygiene, site and product controls that ensure safe, legally compliant food. 
  • Intermediate: Building on basic with an expanded HACCP-based approach and a documented food safety and quality management system. 

Every clause at both levels is similar to, or derived from, a clause in the full Food Safety Standard requirements, with the full standard’s credibility proportioned to smaller sites. Certificated sites at both levels appear in the public BRCGS Directory. 

what is brcgs START

Is START the Right Fit for Your Business? 

START is a development programme rather than the full, GFSI-benchmarked standard. That means the requirements are proportionate, the audit is shorter, and the bar is designed to be achievable for businesses that don’t need full certification. Where a customer specifically requires GFSI-recognised certification, that’s the BRCGS Standard for Food Safety. 

BRCGS START is a way of building real food safety capability, recognised by brands and retailers in its own right. If you’re weighing it up, our team will talk through whether START suits your size and customers, which level makes sense, and what certification would look like in practice. 

What Does Certification Involve? 

  1. Talk to us: Tell us about your business, products and customers. We’ll recommend Basic or Intermediate and quote clearly. 
  2. Prepare at your pace: The free BRCGS self-assessment tool shows where your current practices already meet the requirements and where the gaps are.  
  3. The audit: Shorter and more proportionate than a full standard audit – typically around a day on site for the basic level, and about a day and a half for intermediate. 
  4. Certification and listing: Any non-conformities should be corrected first, then your certificate is issued, and your business appears in the public BRCGS Directory, where customers can verify it. 
working with amtivo for brcgs start

Why Small Food Businesses Choose Amtivo 

Helping suppliers take confident first steps into certification is our speciality. Our auditors come from the food industry, and START audits focus on building food safety capability – not catching a small business out. We’ll explain requirements in plain English rather than audit jargon. 

Plus, we’re here for every stage of your business as it develops. Whatever your customers ask of you in future, we certify the full BRCGS suite and other food and packaging standards. The certification body that knows your business today is the same one supporting whatever comes next. 

Working with Amtivo  

With around 1,500 BRCGS certificates and growing, many businesses in the UK and Ireland trust Amtivo with BRCGS certification. We certify the full suite of BRCGS standards, so multi-activity operations can keep one certification body and one relationship across everything they certify: 

Whichever combination your operation needs, you will get a coordinator who seeks to understand your operation and your audit history, from first enquiry to issued certificate.  

understanding BRCGS START

FAQs