The Price of IFS, BRCGS or FSSC 22000 Certification: the Real Cost Items

“How much does IFS certification cost?” A fair question — and the honest answer is that there is no single public price, for IFS Food, BRCGS or FSSC 22000. What does exist is a well-identified cost structure, with items you can price through quotes. This article breaks it down so you can build a realistic budget, without magic numbers from websites that commit to nothing.

Why nobody can quote you “the price”

Three structural reasons:

1. Certificates are issued by competing accredited certification bodies, each with its own daily rate and fee policy. The scheme owner does not sell the certification.
2. Audit duration depends on your site: floor area, headcount, number of ranges and lines, process complexity. Two companies in the same sector can receive very different quotes.
3. Most of the cost is not the audit: it is the gap between your site today and the level the standard requires. That cost appears on no certification body’s quote.

The scientific literature confirms this structure. The study by Karaman, Cobanoglu, Tunalioglu and Ova published in 2012 in Food Control (“Barriers and benefits of the implementation of food safety management systems among the Turkish dairy industry”) identifies infrastructure costs, the shortage of qualified staff and the documentation burden as the main obstacles to implementing a food-safety management system — well ahead of the audit price. Likewise, Escanciano and Santos-Vijande, in Food Control in 2014 (“Reasons and constraints to implementing an ISO 22000 food safety management system: Evidence from Spain”), find that the dominant brakes are the overall implementation cost and the internal time mobilised (see the study).

Item 1: the audit and the certificate

This is the easiest item to price, through competitive quotes:

• Audit days, billed at the body’s daily rate. The number of days is set by rules specific to each scheme, based on site characteristics.
• Ancillary fees: auditor travel and accommodation, file fees.
• Scheme-related fees (registration, certified-site databases), passed on as applicable.

Always request several detailed quotes, specifying: product categories, headcount (including seasonal workers), floor areas, number of lines, working languages. Check the availability of auditors qualified for your categories — a cheaper body with no slot for months can cost dearly in delayed listings.

One caution: this item is recurring. IFS Food and BRCGS generally run on a full annual audit; FSSC 22000 on a three-year cycle with annual surveillance audits then recertification. Budget certification as a subscription, not a one-off investment.

Item 2: the site upgrade — the real centre of gravity

This is where budgets explode or stay under control, depending on your starting point. Typical workstreams, from cheapest to priciest:

Workstream	Nature of the cost
Documentation and HACCP	Internal time, possibly support
Food defense, food fraud, food-safety culture	Internal time, training
Equipment (foreign-body detection, metrology, monitoring)	Capital expenditure
Infrastructure (zoning, flows, surfaces, staff facilities)	Construction work, sometimes heavy

A site already rigorous on the EU hygiene package and HACCP, holding where relevant a well-maintained agrément sanitaire (French sanitary approval), will mostly face a documentation and organisation workstream. An ageing site may discover that infrastructure upgrades represent several times the cumulative cost of years of audits. Hence the golden rule: run the gap analysis before budgeting, never the other way round.

Item 3: support and training

Three optional but frequent expenses:

• Consultancy: a consultant to structure the system, run the gap analysis or rebuild the HACCP study. Useful when the quality team is small; avoid the “they write, we file” mode — auditors quickly spot a bolted-on system.
• The mock audit: a full-dress rehearsal under real conditions, internal or supported. One of the best cost-benefit ratios of the whole project.
• Training: the quality team (scheme requirements, HACCP) and production staff — because food-safety culture is now audited through shop-floor interviews under all three schemes.

Item 4: internal time, the cost nobody budgets

Building the system, keeping daily records, preparing and hosting audits, closing out findings: this time is a real cost, often equivalent to a significant share of a full-time role in the initial certification year. Nor does it disappear afterwards: the IFS or BRCGS grade is replayed at every audit, and the unannounced audit regime demands a permanently audit-ready site — the annual “preparation sprint” is no longer a viable strategy.

How to optimise the budget without weakening the project

1. Pick the right scheme first time. Switching schemes mid-project is expensive: re-read your customer requirements first — our comparison IFS, BRCGS or FSSC 22000 walks you through it.
2. Pool the audits. If you must hold two schemes, a combined audit by the same body reduces billed days.
3. Prioritise by criticality, not by ease. Tackling the fundamental requirements first (KOs at IFS, major requirements elsewhere) avoids audit failure — and a re-audit is the worst of all overruns.
4. Spread heavy works across a multi-year plan presented to the auditor, rather than doing everything in the panic of the last three months.

Take action

A GFSI certification budget is built in order: gap analysis, certification-body quotes, workstream costing — not the reverse. To frame the whole journey, read our guide to the GFSI schemes: IFS Food, BRCGS, FSSC 22000 and download the free ebook that comes with it.