What is IFS PACsecure? A Guide to Packaging Safety and Quality Certification
Packaging is the last line of defence between a product and the world — and sometimes, when things go wrong, it is the source of the problem. Chemical migration into food, foreign-body contamination from converting lines, functional failures that spoil or expose the contents: packaging risks are real, and brand owners know it. IFS PACsecure version 3 is the certification standard that addresses them head-on. This guide explains what PACsecure covers, who needs it, what the management system contains, and how certification works — written for quality and technical managers in packaging manufacturing and converting.
What is IFS PACsecure?
IFS PACsecure version 3 is a certification standard for the safety and quality of packaging materials, covering the manufacture and conversion of primary and secondary packaging used for food, household and personal care, and other consumer products. Its scope spans the full range of substrates — plastics, paper and board, glass, metal, and flexible materials — reflecting the diversity of modern packaging supply.
The Standard exists because packaging can compromise the very products it is meant to protect. Risks such as migration of substances into food, contamination during production, and functional failure of barriers, seals, or closures demand systematic, auditable control. PACsecure adapts the proven IFS methodology — risk-based requirements, a common structure, and the IFS scoring approach — to these packaging-specific hazards.
Within the wider certification landscape, IFS PACsecure is intended to align with GFSI benchmarking for packaging, complementing food-manufacturing standards such as IFS Food and FSSC 22000. That alignment matters: it means a brand owner can source certified product and certified packaging under mutually recognised, benchmarked schemes across the whole supply chain.
Who needs IFS PACsecure certification?
- Packaging manufacturers producing primary packaging that directly contacts food or sensitive products.
- Converters transforming films, board, foils, and resins into finished packaging formats.
- Producers of secondary packaging whose products influence protection, labelling, and logistics integrity.
- Suppliers to retail own-label programmes, where retailers extend certification demands beyond food to packaging.
- Exporters to markets and customers that specify GFSI-aligned packaging certification.
The demand signal typically comes from customers: food and consumer-goods manufacturers under their own GFSI obligations increasingly require certificated assurance from packaging suppliers, both to control risk and to streamline their supplier approval processes.
Key benefits of certification
- Demonstrable assurance of packaging safety, quality, and legality to brand owners and manufacturers — evidence, not assertion.
- Reduced duplication of customer audits, replacing a queue of second-party assessments with one recognised certificate.
- Improved traceability and recall readiness, from raw material lots through converting runs to delivered packaging.
- Structured support for regulatory compliance, particularly for food-contact materials.
- Enhanced market access into supply chains that require benchmarked packaging certification.
Many converters also find the certification process professionalises the fundamentals: hygiene regimes appropriate to food-contact production, disciplined foreign-body controls, and specification management that finally matches the pace of customer artwork and material changes.
What's inside the management system?
A PACsecure v3 management system follows the common IFS architecture, tailored to packaging manufacture:
- Senior management responsibility and governance — policy, objectives, resourcing, and management review.
- A product safety and quality management system built on hazard analysis and risk assessment appropriate to packaging — chemical (including migration), physical, microbiological, and functional hazards across each material and process.
- Material suitability and intended-use control — ensuring packaging is safe and fit for its declared application, especially food contact.
- Resource management — trained personnel, hygiene rules proportionate to product risk, and appropriate facilities.
- Operational processes — design and development, purchasing and supplier approval, production and conversion controls, hygiene and foreign-body/contamination control, equipment maintenance, and calibration.
- Traceability from raw materials to delivered product, verified through documented exercises.
- Product defence and fraud mitigation — protecting material authenticity and integrity, including vulnerability assessment of raw material supply.
- Compliance management for legal and customer requirements applicable to packaging in contact with food or sensitive products.
- Measurement, analysis, improvement — internal audits, complaint management, incident and recall procedures, and corrective action.
How the Standard is assessed
Certification audits are performed by approved certification bodies using the IFS scoring system: each requirement is scored, aggregate results determine the outcome, and knock-out criteria protect the most fundamental requirements — a KO failure prevents certification regardless of the overall score. Certificates are issued for a defined validity period and maintained through renewal audits. Because the methodology is shared across the IFS portfolio, customers can read a PACsecure result with the same fluency as an IFS Food score.
The road to certification
- Gap analysis — assess current systems against version 3, with early focus on hazard analysis coverage per material type and food-contact compliance evidence.
- System development — document the management system: procedures, risk assessments, specifications, and record templates.
- Implementation — train the workforce, embed hygiene and contamination controls on the shop floor, and begin generating records.
- Internal audit and management review — verify effectiveness, run a full traceability test, and close gaps.
- Certification audit — the scored third-party assessment, followed by corrective action submission within defined timescales.
- Renewal cycle — maintain the system continuously and renew certification through periodic re-audits.
How AGS can help
Building PACsecure documentation from scratch means translating packaging-specific hazards — migration, foreign bodies, functional failure — into a complete, auditor-ready system. The AGS IFS PACsecure v3 Management System Toolkit, an Advanced-tier package of 56 files, delivers exactly that: fully editable manuals, procedures, forms, and compliance matrices aligned to the Standard, covering hazard and risk assessment, material suitability, hygiene and contamination control, traceability, product defence, and fraud mitigation. Every document is designed for rapid tailoring to your substrates, processes, and customer base, compressing the journey from gap analysis to a confident scored audit. For packaging producers who want recognised certification without reinventing the documentation wheel, the AGS toolkit is the smart starting point.
