Visiting suppliers in China

Our purchasers regularly visit our most important raw material suppliers. A lot of our fish is filleted in China: Around the coastal towns Dalian and Qingdao there are many fish processing companies.

Towards the end of 2017 Radboud Hendriks visited three processing plants in Zhuanghe (Dalian region). Two of these are new suppliers of yellowfin sole.

When we want to embark on a supply agreement with a new supplier we always take a number of steps before we can start accepting deliveries from the company in question:

• The supplier shall examine our supplier manual and sign it for understood and agreed
• The supplier completes a self-assessment
• The supplier provides us with all the necessary quality certificates
• The supplier is audited by an independent third party organisation
• The supplier must demonstrate that shortcomings, if any, have been resolved
• The supplier is audited by our purchaser a second time; in addition to the standard quality aspects, also the way in which the company deals with its employees is checked.

During his visit to China Radboud took care of this second audit of two new suppliers. Both plants have been approved for delivery – with a few comments. The first shipments from these new suppliers are expected to arrive in Lemmer in the first half of 2018.