ASI & Bonsucro launch oversight project

29th May 2019

We are pleased to announce that Bonsucro has signed a service agreement with ASI – Assurance Services International to participate in a Bonsucro-run pilot to evaluate the benefits of sharing Bonsucro’s Certification Bodies oversight activities between internal resources and an external service provider. ASI, a member of ISEAL, is a leading accreditation body working globally to support and manage the oversight programmes of various Voluntary Schemes.

Bonsucro’s credibility relies heavily on the performance of its licensed Certification Bodies (CBs), their auditors and their decisions on compliance against the Bonsucro Standards. Currently the monitoring of CBs’ performance (oversight) is done in-house by the Bonsucro Secretariat. 

As Bonsucro certifications increase in terms of numbers and geographical reach, an increasing amount of time is being spent by the Secretariat overseeing the quality and consistency of audits. At the Bonsucro Board meeting of June 2018, the Board agreed to explore options for outsourcing some of these activities to answer the challenges raised by the success of the certification programme

This year, ASI will help deliver the Head Office and Witness assessments for three licensed Certification Bodies and one applicant Certification Body. All other assessments will continue to be done in-house by the Bonsucro Secretariat. The additional costs incurred by the pilot are borne by Bonsucro. 

ASI welcomed the pilot: “We are proud to have been selected by Bonsucro for this pilot and very much looking forward to delivering these oversight activities and to bringing our experience and expertise to the project”, said Mounia Essefiani, ASI Project Coordinator.

Nicolas Viart, Bonsucro’s Standards & Innovation Director, emphasised the benefits that the collaboration could bring to Bonsucro’s work: “ASI is a well-established, credible presence in the voluntary sustainability standards world, and we are excited to see how our two organisations can work together to ensure that our oversight activities are continuously improving and of the highest quality”.

We will send regular updates to Bonsucro newsletter subscribers, and the outcome of the pilot will be presented around October 2019. The pilot will help inform Bonsucro’s long-term CB oversight strategy.

For more information, please contact Bonsucro Assurance Manager celine@bonsucro.com