Simonds Farsons Cisk plc were presented with the ISO 9001:2000 by the certification company SGS United Kingdom Ltd. Farsons chief executive Louis A. Farrugia received the certification on behalf of Farsons from SGS's senior quality assurance auditor, Roger Courtenay.

"Customers demand that Farsons' products and services meet their expectations not only on price but also on quality. In order to further fulfil this responsibility we need to manage quality in a disciplined and systematic way," Mr Farrugia said. "The ISO9001 quality management system model provides us with new opportunities and better ways of managing quality."

Mr Farrugia also thanked Mr Pierre Dalmas, the project manager within Farsons for this certification.

Farsons have managed to achieve this prestigious certification first time and on schedule. This was achieved through the commitment and support from all levels of employees, managerial grades up to the chairman and board of directors. In order to obtain this certification, no fewer than 33 management reviews were carried out since January 2000 to monitor certification status and some 1,200 documents were controlled and approved. A new centralised document control system has been created.

This year alone 850 hours were dedicated to workstation training. Ninety-nine employees were certified on one or more workstation, while seven material suppliers received approved SFC Internal Material Procurement Specifications.

SGS will continue providing independent on-going assessments that identify opportunities for improvement at Farsons. The company believes that a quality management system is an investment for the future. "Although we do realise that we are not yet where we want to be, during the last months we have achieved two goals: we have made significant improvements and we have attained a sense of determination throughout our company to reach our desired objectives," Mr Farrugia said.

"We are pleased to note that at Farsons this exercise has generated a strong sense of ownership by a number of quality control technicians and foremen grades who were also supported by their respective managers. The process towards certification has offered SFC with an opportunity to rethink, re-define and improve its manufacturing or service activities," Mr Courtenay said.

Present for the certification ceremony were Bryan Gera, chairman and Anthony P. Galdes, vice-chairman of Simonds Farsons Cisk, together with senior management members of the company.