It is barely possible to maintain a flawless quality in mass production of any product. With the processing of a large amount of raw material including manual work at several stages, mistakes happen.
At the same time, the word "quality" might mean differently to different customers, depending on which market segment they are after. Some would need a premium product for a hypermarket chain. Yet, some other customers would not need such high-end product for some wet markets or small stores.
Therefore, to us, "quality" frozen food products, besides being perfectly safe for human consumption, are those well fulfilling aeach customer's needs and expectations.
We start this whole quality control process from you - the buyer and the ultimate "judge" of the product. We believe you understand the product well - even better than us and you know what quality to satisfy your market.
Therefore, we would discuss with you to set clear standards for any product you buy from us. Take a shrimp PD product for example, we should regulate how deep the devein cutting should be, what colors are preferred or to what extent, a fault is acceptable. These small details greatly help avoid quality arguments later on.
Those specific requirements need to be informed to the processor to see what can or cannot be agreed on. The discussion should take a while. However, once this step is done, we would have a clear "scale" for quality measurement of your product. Sometimes, for a product of many details, we would travel to the production site to work on a sample product before it is massively produced.
Finally, before the products are ready for shipment, random samples will be picked out of the whole shipment quantity for a few tests including:
1. Sensory tests:
These tests performed by a quality control person (QC) include. Sensory evaluation on a product is an important part in any quality checking process. The way we perform these tests is similar to the way any consumer does on a food product. Therefore, these tests help us evaluate if the product is acceptable from the outside objective evaluation.
- Sight test: To see if the finished product is in line with the regulated product specifications, and if the product is pleasing to the eyes, which is essential for retail.
- Touch test: To see if the texture is firm, a little "bouncy" or too soft.
- Smell test: To see if there is any abnormal smell coming from the product.
- Taste test: To see how the product might actually taste when cooked and eaten by a consumer.
2. Analysis lab tests:
To get deeper inside the product, sensory tests are not enough as there are aspects of a product that cannot be seen or checked by the use of human senses. For example, aspects such as moisture content, antibiotics or microbiology have to been tested in a lab.
If there is a specific requirement from you, we would send some random pieces from the shipment to an accredited lab for an analysis test. A report will be issued accordingly by that lab for the tested criteria for your information.
For analysis lab tests, we are working with Intertek Vietnam.