How to become a GAFTA approved superintendent, plus FOSFA

To become a Gafta approved superintendent, a company must be a Gafta member in Category C, hold either ISO/IEC 17020 Type A accreditation or a certificate to the Gafta Standard for Supervision, Sampling and Check Weighing, and work to Gafta's weighing and sampling rules and its Code of Practice. FOSFA and NOFOTA run separate schemes with their own criteria, and recognition by one does not carry over to the others.

Only organisations can be approved. A freelancer who wants to work on these contracts either joins a company that is approved or builds one. This article describes what each association publishes, so you can plan the route and the cost.

What Gafta requires

The Approved Registers page sets five conditions (Gafta, September 2026). They fall into three groups.

What the company is. It must be an organisation, not an individual, and its business must be testing agricultural commodities and/or animal feed. It must also be a Gafta member in Category C, the category for superintendents.

What standing it holds. It needs one of two things: a valid certificate of conformance to the Gafta Standard, or a valid accreditation as a Type A inspection company against the latest version of ISO/IEC 17020, with a scope that fits the work.

How it works. It must operate to Gafta's weighing rules (No. 123) and sampling rules (No. 124), and follow the Code of Practice for the Approved Register of Superintendents.

The reason the register matters is in the contracts. Under the Code of Practice, traders are required by the contract to appoint superintendents from the Approved Register. For the contracts themselves, see what GAFTA is, and for the rules a superintendent works to, sampling rules in agri trade.

Membership

Gafta membership is based on the country where the company is located. Applicants apply in writing and pay an application fee and the annual subscription for their category; both are set by the Gafta Council and the published Membership Rules do not state amounts (Membership Rules 2026, 1.1 and 1.7 to 1.9). Category C is for superintendent and surveyor members. Ask Gafta for the current fees.

Route 1: ISO/IEC 17020 accreditation

The accreditation must be Type A and its scope must include, as a minimum, the inspection and supervision of traded agricultural commodities in accordance with Gafta rules and the Code of Practice. The accreditation body must operate to ISO/IEC 17011 and be a signatory to the international recognition arrangements; the certificate or annex must list every site for which approval is sought (Code of Practice, 2.4 and 2.5). The steps, costs and assessment content of this route are in ISO 17020 accreditation for a small inspection company. Type A is demanding: the company and its staff may not be engaged in buying, owning or using the goods on the scope.

Route 2: the Gafta Standard

Gafta provides its own standard for members who do not wish to or cannot gain ISO/IEC 17020 accreditation. You send Gafta the application form, pay for the audit, and Gafta instructs an auditor. According to Gafta, on-site audits cost GBP 2,100, are carried out by NSF International (UK), and are in English. Gafta describes a single-day audit that can normally be arranged within a few weeks of payment, and calls the Standard often a less complicated, cost-effective alternative to ISO accreditation, especially for smaller businesses. Treat that as the association's own description.

Version 7.0 (2019) of the Standard covers how the company is run and staffed, the equipment it uses, and the field work itself, including sampling, check weighing and the related procedures, and then how results are certified, audited internally and recorded. The full contents are in the Standard, which Gafta publishes, so read them there before you plan an audit. It separates requirements that must be met from those that should be, and a major non-conformance against a key requirement leads to suspension until it is put right. Some points that matter for a small company:

• Impartiality is a requirement, and so is monitoring risks to it on an ongoing basis.
• Written records of training must be kept for all employees.
• Records must be legible, signed by the person who did the task, and kept for at least seven years.
• Self-employed inspectors engaged by an approved superintendent are not treated as subcontractors if they are contracted under the principal's management system, covered by its insurance, follow its training, and are audited by it (1.7.1). The principal keeps responsibility for the determination of conformity.

Gafta does not publish a minimum number of years or inspections for the company. The Standard asks instead for defined competence requirements, training and evidence.

Starting from nothing

The Code of Practice has a provision for start-ups: a newly elected member may be listed on the register for six months after a successful pre-audit to the Gafta Standard, so that it can begin operations and collect the evidence. The full initial audit must then be completed before the six-month anniversary (Code of Practice, 2.8). Afterwards the listing runs for 12 months at a time, subject to continued compliance (2.7). The Code is dated December 2021, so confirm with Gafta that it still applies the provision.

After approval

The Approved Registers page says initial audits are on site for new members, and that superintendents have an on-site audit every five years, with other annual audits held remotely. The Standard itself (version 7.0, 2019) describes annual audits, with the fourth audit and every third audit after it on site. The two documents differ. The register page is the more recent statement (it lists 2023 application forms and a 2024 analyst standard), while the Standard is the 2019 text, so the five-year on-site cycle is the likelier current one. Ask Gafta which cycle applies to you. Gafta also offers an Approved Registers Online Learning programme, starting with a module on Gafta and supervision, priced for 2026 at GBP 659 for members and GBP 999 for non-members; it is not stated to be compulsory.

What FOSFA asks

FOSFA calls its scheme the Member Superintendents Scheme, and members are sometimes referred to as surveyors. The steps are (FOSFA, September 2026):

1. Choose the superintendent category of membership.
2. Complete the online application. Under the Code of Practice an application must be proposed by a trading member and seconded by a trading member or a full broker member; in some cases another body may second it.
3. Wait for confirmation; FOSFA's how-to-join page says two current members must endorse the application, one of them a trading member, which matches the proposer and seconder rule in the Code of Practice. The same page says superintendent and analyst applications are passed to the Technical Committee for review before they go to the Council for approval. The Code also gives the Council the power to suspend or terminate a superintendent member. If successful you receive an invoice for the annual subscription. FOSFA lists the superintendent subscription at GBP 685 a year, with one representative.

Members must be independent of any company engaged directly in trade in FOSFA commodities, comply with the Code of Practice, keep current copies of the relevant standards and the equipment they prescribe, accept technical visits at FOSFA's discretion, provide a 24-hour service to the trade, and not subcontract superintending to anyone other than another recognised member superintendent, and then only with the principals' agreement. Membership is per commodity section: oilseeds, or oils and fats. See what FOSFA is.

What NOFOTA asks

NOFOTA calls it recognition, and publishes criteria for a recognised superintendent company dated 1 January 2025. The company must not be engaged in any way in the trade in NOFOTA-type products, and sister companies, a laboratory for example, must operate independently of the superintendence. Its general conditions must be deposited with a district court or chamber of commerce, or published on its website, and its liability insurance must be with first-class underwriters and clearly cover the recognised company. It must follow the FOSFA Code of Practice for Member Superintendents and use ISO 5555:2001 for sampling (NOFOTA's text still names the 2001 edition, and ISO has since revised that standard, so check which edition applies before you rely on it), and be certified to ISO 9001 or equivalent. Subcontracting is allowed only, with the principal's agreement, to another recognised superintendent company.

The company must be a NOFOTA member. Initial recognition follows an audit by auditors appointed by the Technical Committee and is granted by the NOFOTA Council after positive advice. Every three years the company submits a questionnaire with its latest ISO certificate and audit report. Recognition can be withdrawn after two warnings, or at any time at the Council's discretion. See what NOFOTA is.

	Gafta	FOSFA	NOFOTA
Name	Approved Register	Member Superintendents Scheme	Recognised company
Membership	Category C	Superintendent member	Member required
Quality route	ISO 17020 Type A or Gafta Standard	Code of Practice, technical visits	ISO 9001 or equivalent, audit, insurance
How you apply	Audit application form, plus membership	Online form, proposer and seconder	Audit, then Council decision

A realistic route for a small firm

If you are a freelancer, the quickest documented way onto these contracts is to work as an outsourced inspector under an approved company's system, as the Gafta Standard describes. Becoming approved yourself means a company, a management system with records, the membership fees of each association and an audit. Start with the records, because every route asks for them.

Before you apply anywhere, keep a training file for each person and a signed file for each job, as if the auditor arrived next week.

Run your survey company on FOSS

FOSS, the Field Operational Services System, holds a job from nomination to certificate: offline entry on board, built-in calculation methods as used in the sector, documents generated in your own house style, and an audit log of who entered which value. Run your survey company on FOSS, or get in touch. An association decides on approval, not software. Operium is a software supplier: it is not a member of GAFTA, FOSFA or NOFOTA and holds none of these approvals.