CHAIN OF CUSTODY: DEFAULT

The MSC Chain of Custody Default Standard applies to any organisation that has a single site handling or trading certified products. The Default Standard is also applicable for any organisation that has multiple sites handling or trading certified products, each site is individually audited against five chain of custody principles and a single multi-site certificate is issued.

A Chain of Custody certificate is valid for three years, following successful certification and depending on your activity, certified organisations are required to undertake annual surveillance audits or once (at 18 months) to demonstrate continued compliance with the CoC Default Standard.

A Chain of Custody audit will determine whether the operation can demonstrate conformity with the Standard’s five core principles:

PRINCIPLE 1: Certified products are purchased from certified suppliers
PRINCIPLE 2: Certified products are identifiable
PRINCIPLE 3: Certified products are segregated
PRINCIPLE 4: Certified products are traceable and volumes are recorded
PRINCIPLE 5: The organisation’s management system addresses the requirements of this Standard

Following formalisation of contracts, generally prospective certificate holders require a few weeks to review the Standard and prepare using the pre-audit checklist. Once the client is considered ready, an audit date is booked and an audit plan is sent. Presuming there are no non-conformities to address, there is a 30-day window to make a final certification decision and 10 days following to issue the certificate. Details around timeframes and requirements in the event of non-conformities are in Section 9 of the MSC CoC Certification Requirements.

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