The Ambriola Company, Inc – NJMEP HACCP Training Success Story

Since 1921, Ambriola has been committed to importing the finest Italian cheeses into the United States. The Ambriola Company, Inc. is the sole importer of the two most respected cheese brands from Italy, Auricchio, and Locatelli. With a reputation for quality to uphold, The Ambriola Company is dedicated to keeping their staff current with the latest training and certification requirements.

Challenge

The Ambriola Company has a Safe Quality Food (SQF) audit coming up and this requires the company to have an SQF practitioner with Hazards Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) training on staff. The company recently hired Victoria Mollinedo, Quality Assurance / SQF Practitioner who obtained her Bachelor’s in Food Science from Montclair State University. She has experience with SQF audits but didn’t have HACCP training previously. Without this accreditation, Ambriola wouldn’t have someone on staff that could manage the complexities of this critical process.  Furthermore, they needed a HACCP trained employee that would not only handle future SQF audits but be able to pass down this training and knowledge to current and future employees.

Solution

To address all these challenges at one time, The Ambriola Company, Inc. turned to NJMEP for training. Victoria attended the HACCP two-day course, led by NJMEP’s very own Juliana Canale  (Seafood HACCP & HACCP certified) where Victoria acquired essential skills to help her new role by becoming a source of knowledge for the rest of the organization. The course covered: Identifying hazards associated with raw materials and process steps and assign controls, determining the likelihood and severity of raw material hazards and process hazards, identifying critical control points (CCPs) and defining critical limits, and evaluating a monitoring and verification procedure for CCPs.

Results

• Victoria is now able to manage the SQF audit with her new HACCP certificate of completion of training.
• Due to the complex nature of HACCP management system, Victoria is now able to pass this knowledge and execution of HACCP material down to the rest of the team.

Victoria shared how she felt about her experience with NJMEP after completing the HACCP course.

“Juliana’s HACCP course instruction was clear and detailed while presenting the material. She set up by explaining what she was going to teach us, summarized, and proceeded to teach, providing relevant real-life examples. She found out what we handled and catered examples to us to make the course meaningful. I have taken many similar food safety courses – this was very well done, which I attribute primarily to the instructor.” – Victoria Mollinedo, Quality Assurance / SQF Practitioner at The Ambriola Company, Inc. a Subsidiary of Auricchio S.p.A

The story first published in Manufacturing Matters! Sign up and receive the NJMEP’s quarterly magazine.