The country's second largest organic certification body Organic Farmers & Growers (OF&G) has decided to hold fees at last year's level in a bid to win new food processing and manufacturing licensees. Crucially for competitiveness, this includes a fee cap which means, regardless of a company's annual turnover, the maximum it will pay for OF&G/UKROFS certification is £1,000, explains OF&G operations manager Steve Belton.

"For established organic businesses, this has a massive impact on their certification costs," he claims. Since OF&G took the decision and without publicity, Steve Belton reports 15 new certification contracts with organic food manufacturers and processors.

"With such a narrow margin between profit and loss in the food trade, businesses cannot be expected to pay more than the minimum in on-costs," he adds. "Very deliberately, our policy is to identify the essentials of certification and do them well. If it's non-essential, we don't do it. That way, our clients don't have to pay for it and we are helping them keep costs down."