Product safety guidelines for suppliers

Duration: 3:01

Catherine Beard - Business NZ — Executive Director Marketing

This is an international standard that we've adopted in New Zealand so I think it's going to be hugely beneficial for Business. Anyone who's in the business of designing manufacturing or even importing products that are going to end up with consumers should get right across the standard, and basically what it is, is it's a roadmap of how to do the stuff and It's all laid out there and particularly for small to medium sized businesses who don't maybe have big internal resources to grapple with this sort of thing. This standards going to keep you safe it's going to give you a big checklist of what to do and, how to make sure that your systems and processes are really superb, and you'll be able to foot it with the big boys if you follow the standard.

Jenn McIver - Wishbone Design — Executive Director

Standards matter a lot to us here at Wishbone. We've never developed a product without making sure that it complies with the standard. And the reason is because we need to be transparent to the parents and grandparents who buy our products that the product will be safe for their child to use.

John Noonan - Mitre 10 (NZ) Limted — Group Manager Imports

To create a product safety culture of might of ten it's really important that we know about the products were bringing into our business we've got to make sure that they meet all standards and requirements and it's also really important that we know our partners and our suppliers are bringing products into our business with full knowledge.

Martin Rushton - MBIE Trading Standards — Principal Advisor

So the purpose of NZS 10377 is to give guidance to businesses both large businesses and small businesses around those things they need to consider in the whole supply chain of the product. Everything from the design of the product, through the manufacture process through the distribution and transport processes to placing the product on the shop shelf. At every stage there are factors that can impact on the safety of the end product and this Standard gives guidance to businesses about those things they need to think about when they're considering those elements of the supply chain.

John Noonan - Mitre 10 (NZ) Limited — Group Manager Imports

10377 is a really useful tool to our business. It adds a framework to allow us to know more about our product. Then once it’s in we know more about the product it's about looking at the very start of the product through to the very end of the product. Does it meet requirements? Have we tested it? Do we know enough about it? Are we measuring the feedback we get on that product? And are we monitoring it appropriately?

So when we're bringing products into the business; for example garden chemicals this product can be pretty dangerous. That's making sure we talk to our suppliers about what ingredients are in here is the documentation behind those ingredients correct and understanding have they gone through the due diligence to make sure the products safe. Putting 10377 into our business forces us to ask those questions and make sure we know more about that product.

Martin Rushton - MBIE Trading Standards — Principal Advisor

This standard in one document captures all the things that will help you supply safe products. So we would advocate that businesses take some time out to consider the standard and think about adopting it in their business processes.

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