Beverages and water bottling

In most plants, water is an ingredient or a service. In yours it is the product, and nothing downstream improves it. A flavoured beverage can carry a correction; bottled water cannot. What comes out of the borehole or the municipal main — its mineral content, its nitrate, its microbiological state — passes through treatment and into the pack largely as it arrived. That makes source-water surveillance a product decision, not a utilities job, and it makes the certificate of analysis the closest thing the product has to a specification.

The practical advantage is one job, one report. A single sampling visit fills the chemistry vessels and the sterile microbiology bottles from the same point at the same time, and the results come back together. When a customer, an inspector or your own release decision needs the full picture, it is one document — not a chemistry report from one laboratory and a micro report from another, dated a week apart.

In bottled water there is no recipe to hide behind. The analysis is the product.

A CIP cycle that completes on the HMI is a record, not a verification. The proof sits in the final rinse: conductivity and pH tell you the caustic left the line, and microbiological testing of the rinse water tells you whether cleaning removed what the line grew since the last cycle. A filler head with an established biofilm re-inoculates every bottle after your last treatment step — the one place in the plant where a micro failure touches every unit.

Finished-product microbiological criteria sit in GSO 1016:2015 by product category. Rinse-water and swab results answer the earlier question — whether the line is capable of meeting those criteria before a batch is committed to it. Where the applicable criteria for your product category are not obvious, the laboratory confirms the set in writing.

Sugars and acidity are process-control numbers and label numbers at once. Brix and total sugars drive the nutrition panel under GSO 2750:2024; titratable acidity and pH sit behind both product character and preservation. A declared sugar value calculated from the recipe drifts with every concentrate lot — a measured value on the finished product is what stands behind the panel when someone checks it.

Preservatives carry two questions: is there enough to do the job, and is there no more than the rule permits. Those are different numbers, and the permitted level depends on the product category. The laboratory confirms the applicable limit and its source in writing before testing, so the result comes back as a decision, not a bare figure.

General labelling

GSO 9:2022

Nutritional declaration

GSO 2750:2024

Microbiological criteria

GSO 1016:2015

Contaminants and toxins

SFDA.FD CAC 193

The pack can fail a product that passed. Food-contact plastics — preforms, bottles, caps, liners — fall under GSO 1863:2013, with general packaging requirements in GSO 839:2021. The operational failure mode is quiet: a resin or masterbatch substitution at the converter that never reaches your specification file, or a taint that only shows in the filled product weeks later. Packaging conformity is not one test but a defined set, and which requirements apply to a given pack format and material is confirmed in writing per job.

A water sample that warmed in the vehicle answers a different question from the one you asked. Microbiology samples travel chilled, in sterile containers, inside their holding times; chemistry samples have their own vessel and preservation requirements. The transport bands below are the ones sample reception applies on receipt — a sample outside its band is flagged before testing, not discovered after.

Results report under ISO/IEC 17025:2017. Nexus holds SAAC accreditation for testing in food and agricultural microbiology (certificate N-T-00607) and for calibration (N-C-00592). Which parameters on a given job fall inside the accredited scope is stated in writing with the quotation, so what the report can be used for is known before the first sample ships.