The firm said multinational food businesses will have food safety auditing, certification, training and consulting needs supported in New Zealand and Australia.
Burwater Pacific Group has worked with NSF International for several years, providing food safety auditing and training services for clients in New Zealand including restaurant auditing, crisis response and recall assistance, consulting and training.
The group, led by Nigel Burrows, will be renamed NSF Burwater and become part of NSF International’s Food Safety and Quality Division, reporting to Peter Bracher, managing director, NSF International Asia Pacific.
Partnership strength
Bracher told FoodQualityNews that the acquisition will strengthen the partnership and enable it to add new services.
“Some of the other partnership arrangements will continue - as it takes a mix of skills to service all of our customer’s needs,” he said.
“Working with the local knowledge of the NSF Burwater team will now allow us to identify NSF International services that will be of value to local customers.”
The region is very strong in the export of quality foods to all regions, said Bracher.
“There is also a growing domestic food and leisure industry that can benefit from our services to help them develop standards in a cost effective way,” he added.
“All our customers continue to grow their businesses and develop their offerings, even when this seems to be counter to the economic trends. There’s also a growing awareness from customers in all regions about food safety issues, so this will drive demand for high quality expert support.
“Added to the traditional concerns about food safety and quality are the growing concerns about potential fraud in the food industry, and the NSF AuthenTechnologies DNA testing capability, will help all of our business units to support our customers.”
About NSF Burwater
NSF Burwater offers services for product launches including label review and development, food control plans and HACCP development, micro and chemical sampling, internal auditing, training and product development.
It also works in auditing services as well as global standards and third-party regulatory audits and training and development in the form of consultation, coaching and formal training in areas from basic food handling to food safety program development and allergen management.
Tom Chestnut, SVP, food safety and quality at NSF International, said: “The addition of the Burwater Pacific Group…enables us to provide global auditing, certification, training and consulting services to the New Zealand and Australian food industry for our multinational retail customers and complements our current operations in the Asia-Pacific region, where we have offices in Korea, China, Thailand and India.”
NSF Burwater will continue to run the New Zealand School of Hygiene, the Food Auditor, and Shoppers Anon., a mystery shopping service.
Nigel Burrows, now regional director for NSF International in New Zealand and Australia, said Burwater already had a strong working relationship with NSF International.
“The opportunity to have access to the technical expertise of NSF’s food safety and quality services will benefit New Zealand and Australian food businesses on a local and global level.
“We are extremely excited to be part of NSF International as their global leadership in food safety and quality will benefit our existing and new clients.”