Online Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) Training for South African Food Businesses
Good Manufacturing Practices are the foundational hygiene, facility and process controls that must be working before HACCP or GFSI certification can ever be effective. This online, self-paced course shows QA teams and management how to implement practical GMP and prerequisite programmes across manufacturing, handling, storage and packaging. Build the stable base that every audit, from R638 compliance to FSSC 22000, is measured against.
Our Good Manufacturing Practices course
This online, self-paced course gives you the practical framework to implement GMP and prerequisite programmes across your operation and ends with a downloadable Certificate of Completion.
What are Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)?
Good Manufacturing Practices are the basic operational and environmental conditions that a food business must have in place to consistently produce safe, legal and wholesome product. Often called prerequisite programmes (PRPs), they cover the everyday controls that keep a facility clean and under control: hygienic building and equipment design, cleaning and sanitation, personal hygiene, pest control, waste management, water and services, foreign-matter control and safe handling, storage and packaging. GMP is about doing the ordinary things well, every shift, so that hazards never get the chance to establish themselves.
GMP is the foundation layer of any credible food safety management system. HACCP identifies and controls the significant hazards at specific steps, but it can only work reliably when the surrounding environment is already stable and hygienic. If pest activity, poor cleaning, condensation, cross-contamination or careless personal hygiene are left unmanaged, even a well-written HACCP plan will fail in practice. In short, GMP manages the general risks so that HACCP can focus on the critical ones.
This course takes a practical, implementation-focused approach. Rather than theory alone, it shows food manufacturers, processors and their QA and food-safety teams how to build, document, verify and sustain prerequisite programmes that hold up to internal and external audit, and that give real-world protection to the product and the consumer.
Who is this course for?
GMP is everyone’s responsibility on a food site, but this course is especially valuable for the people who design, run, verify and enforce prerequisite programmes day to day.
Food safety & QA/QC teams
The people who write, monitor and verify the prerequisite programmes that keep the site audit-ready.
Production & line supervisors
Responsible for turning hygiene and process controls into consistent shift-by-shift behaviour on the floor.
Factory & operations management
Accountable for the facility, resources and culture that make GMP sustainable and enforceable.
Hygiene & cleaning team leaders
Own cleaning schedules, sanitation verification and the master cleaning programme that underpins everything else.
Warehouse, storage & dispatch staff
Protect product through correct storage, stock rotation, segregation and handling controls.
Packaging & handling personnel
Prevent contamination and foreign matter at the stages closest to the finished, consumer-facing product.
Small & growing food manufacturers
Businesses building the GMP foundation needed before pursuing HACCP or GFSI certification.
What you will learn
The course focuses on implementing prerequisite programmes that actually work on the floor, not just documents that sit in a file. Key areas covered include:
The full scope of prerequisite programmes and how GMP forms the foundation beneath HACCP and GFSI certification
Hygienic facility and equipment design, including layout, product flow, zoning and separation of clean and raw areas
Building an effective cleaning and sanitation programme, from master cleaning schedules to verification of cleaning effectiveness
Personal hygiene, protective clothing, hand-washing, health screening and visitor controls that prevent contamination
Integrated pest control principles, monitoring, and how to manage a pest-control service and its records
Waste management, drainage, foreign-matter control and physical-hazard prevention (glass, metal, plastic and wood)
Safe handling, storage, stock rotation and packaging controls that protect product integrity through to dispatch
How to document, monitor, verify and continually improve GMP so it stands up to internal and external audits
How GMP fits into your food safety management system
Good Manufacturing Practices are the prerequisite programmes that sit beneath HACCP in every recognised food safety framework. In South Africa, Regulation R638 requires food-handling businesses to maintain hygienic premises, equipment and practices, and a documented HACCP system builds directly on that base. Without functioning GMP, a HACCP study rests on shaky ground: hazards that should have been managed by good hygiene instead land at critical control points, and the whole system becomes fragile and difficult to sustain.
The GFSI-benchmarked schemes make this relationship explicit. FSSC 22000, BRCGS and ISO 22000 all require robust prerequisite programmes (PRPs) as a formal, auditable part of the management system, and auditors routinely find that weak GMP, poor cleaning, pest activity or hygienic-design gaps, is the root cause behind non-conformances. Getting GMP right first is therefore the most cost-effective step toward certification: it reduces audit findings, strengthens your HACCP plan, and demonstrates the day-to-day control that customers and certification bodies expect from a serious food manufacturer.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between GMP, prerequisite programmes and HACCP?
Do I need GMP in place before pursuing HACCP or GFSI certification?
Is this course relevant to Regulation R638 in South Africa?
Is the course online, and how is it delivered?
Who should attend this GMP course?
Is ASC an accredited training provider?
Browse all ASC food safety courses
Every accredited online course we offer — food handler, R638, HACCP, GMP, FSSC 22000, ISO 22000, BRCGS, GLOBALG.A.P., microbiology, allergen, auditing and more.
Get your GMP and prerequisite programmes working
Strong Good Manufacturing Practices are the difference between a food safety system that passes audits and one that constantly fights fires. Give your QA team and management the practical tools to implement, document and sustain the prerequisite programmes that HACCP, R638 and every GFSI scheme depend on. Enrol in ASC’s online, self-paced Implementation of Good Manufacturing Practices course and earn your Certificate of Completion.