07 March 2025
Highlighting Global Fruit, a Canadian marketing and export company with GLOBALG.A.P. Chain of Custody certification
Learn more about Global Fruit, a Canadian cherry marketer and exporter that was one of the first companies in North America to achieve GLOBALG.A.P. Chain of Custody certification. Global Fruit requires their exclusive growers to be GLOBALG.A.P. IFA certified, and many of their packing facilities are GLOBALG.A.P. PHA certified. This combined use of GLOBALG.A.P. solutions promotes safer and more transparent supply chains for all – from farm to fork.
Highlighting Global Fruit, a Canadian marketing and export company with GLOBALG.A.P. Chain of Custody certification
Learn more about Global Fruit, a Canadian cherry marketer and exporter that was one of the first companies in North America to achieve GLOBALG.A.P. Chain of Custody certification. Global Fruit requires their exclusive growers to be GLOBALG.A.P. IFA certified, and most of their packing facilities are GLOBALG.A.P. PHA certified. This combined use of GLOBALG.A.P. solutions enables them to provide their retailer customers with products that originate from GLOBALG.A.P. certified production processes (covered by IFA). This additional assurance is increasingly important as retailers seek verification of environmentally and socially responsible practices in addition to food safety, helping to maintain the value of the product through the supply chain.
About Global Fruit
Global Fruit was established in British Columbia, Canada, in 2002 to support local cherry growers and help them reach global markets. Since then, they have grown to become one of the largest Canadian cherry marketing companies, expanding into the southern hemisphere to provide highest quality fruit. They added Canadian apples to their roster, with the same care and attention that made them successful with cherries.
Global Fruit is not just sourcing and selling cherries locally – akin to their name, they are made up of a global network. While Canadian at heart, their team includes members from the UK, China, Chile, and Argentina. They were among the first North American companies to achieve GLOBALG.A.P. Chain of Custody certification, which helpsmitigate risks and build confidence in increasingly complex global supply chains.
How they utilize GLOBALG.A.P. certification
Supplying retailers all around the world, Global Fruit wanted to showcase that their internal systems and procedures maintain integrity and traceability from the life cycle of the fruit – all the way from being planted at the farm to the fruit’s destination. GLOBALG.A.P.’s Chain of Custody audit supports Global Fruit in testing their own systems, allowing them to demonstrate compliance to their customers.
Richard Isaacs, Managing Director of Global Fruit, explained how important this solution was. “Preparing for the Chain of Custody audit was a hugely valuable experience as it brought colleagues together, helped them share knowledge cross-functionally, and really tested our internal systems. Happily, we passed the audit with a 100% score, which is testament to the great team we have. A special ‘shout out’ must go to our Food Safety & Compliance Officer Lucas Rodriguez as he led this project and demonstrated great commitment to achieving this accolade.”
A piece of a puzzle
GLOBALG.A.P. Chain of Custody (CoC) is just one piece to the puzzle of a whole solution that GLOBALG.A.P. offers. The CoC standard aims to establish procedures that help ensure any product sold with a GLOBALG.A.P. claim is truly sourced from a GLOBALG.A.P. certified production process. Global Fruit showcases this by requiring their exclusive growers to hold a valid GLOBALG.A.P. Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA) certification, and all of their packing facilities are compliant with GLOBALG.A.P.’s Produce Handling Assurance (PHA) or another GFSI-recognized safe food handling standard.
This way, products produced under GLOBALG.A.P. certified processes are connected with a GLOBALG.A.P. claim further down the chain – reducing integrity risks, providing reassurance to customers, and adding value to a brand in the market. By using GLOBALG.A.P.’s standards together as part of a greater solution, supply chains are more transparent for all.
Advice to fellow peers
As a long-time player in the fresh produce industry, Global Fruit’s advice is to focus on choosing great partners to work with. Global Fruit advises that companies work with others who really care about the produce that is being handled throughout the supply chain. “These relationships will always be tested because there is so much that we can’t control, especially the weather and international freight,” Richard says, “but if you have people who always want to do the right job and who really understand the critical control points that must be managed then it’s possible to take fruit from one part of the world and deliver amazing quality to consumers thousands of miles away.”
