Journey
Set up as a food manufacturer
Learning path for new general and processed food manufacturers — bakeries, confectioners, oil and fat processors, millers and makers of prepared foods. Work out which rules apply, register and run a safe food business, keep contaminants and composition within legal limits, and verify everything with a compliance checklist.
What this journey is for
Making food for sale means you are a food business in the eyes of the law, with duties that begin before your first product leaves the premises. You have to register, run a food safety management system and label what you make correctly. You also have to keep your workers safe and keep contaminants within legal limits. This journey walks you through that path in the order you will live it, from working out which rules apply through to checking you have everything in place.
It does not give you the step-by-step instructions or the figures — those live in the guides it points to. This journey is the map: it tells you where you are, why each stage matters, and which guide to open next.
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Work out which regulations apply to you
Start by getting the picture right. Food and drink manufacturing splits into distinct regimes depending on what you make — general processed food, products of animal origin, alcohol, soft drinks and water, and animal feed each carry different gateways. Working this out first saves you from discovering a missed obligation late, when production is already running and expensive to fix. Use the router guide to find your route before you commit to anything.
Which food and drink manufacturing regulations apply to your business
Work out which rules apply to what you make. A reference guide that routes you from the shared starting gate — food business registration and the hygiene-rating inspection — to the right path for your products.
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Register and put your safety foundations in place
Whatever you make, this is the universal spine. Register the food business with your local authority. Build a HACCP-based food safety management system. Get your labelling and allergen information right. Protect your workers — flour and grain dust is the leading cause of occupational asthma in food manufacturing. Hold employers' liability insurance. And meet your site's environmental and packaging duties. Register at least 28 days before you start trading, so build this in early.
Register and run a safe food and drink manufacturing business
The duties every food and drink manufacturer carries — food business registration, HACCP, the hygiene rating, allergen labelling, workplace health and safety, employers' liability insurance and your site's environmental and packaging duties.
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Keep contaminants and composition within the limits
Processed food carries product-specific controls. You have to keep process-formed contaminants like acrylamide down. You have to stay within the maximum levels for contaminants such as cadmium, dioxins and ochratoxin A. You also have to meet pesticide residue limits and follow the special rules for novel foods and for infant formula. These controls sit inside your food safety management system, so design them in rather than bolting them on.
Meet food composition, contaminant and labelling controls
Keep contaminants and residues within legal limits and control process-formed contaminants — acrylamide mitigation, contaminant maximum levels, pesticide residues, novel food authorisation and the rules for infant formula and food for special medical purposes.
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Verify you have covered everything
Once the moving parts are in motion, take a step back and check the whole picture holds together. A compliance checklist lets you confirm, in one place, that each obligation is genuinely met rather than assumed. Use it as your readiness review before your first production run, and come back to it as your range changes — your obligations can shift as you add new products or processes.
Food and drink manufacturer: compliance checklist
Verify you have covered everything before your first production run and as your range changes, so you can confirm you are ready to produce and stay compliant as you grow.
You will also need the general business set-up duties
Alongside the sector-specific path above, every manufacturing business carries a set of general obligations that apply beyond food and are just as compulsory. As you build the business you will also need to:
- protect the people who work for you — meet your workplace health and safety duties, including the COSHH assessments that apply where you handle dust, cleaning chemicals and other hazardous substances.
- hold employers' liability insurance once you take anyone on.
- handle personal data lawfully — most businesses must complete data protection registration with the ICO.
- meet your fire safety duties for the premises you work from, which matter wherever you store flour, oils, packaging and other combustible materials.
These general duties run in parallel with the sector path rather than after it, so set them up as you establish the business. The compliance checklist brings the core workplace duties together so you can confirm they are covered.
Where this leaves you
You now have the shape of the whole task: work out which rules apply, register and run a safe food business, keep contaminants and composition within the limits, and verify the lot — all while putting the general business set-up obligations in place around it. Work the guides in order and you will have a clear, defensible position from your first production run onwards.