Oƌering Healthier
and Sustainable
Choices
Managing the risk
of modern slavery
in our supply
chains
In 2019 we stated that we were aiming to have completed phase 1 of our SEDEX engagement i.e. to
have connected with all own brand and exclusive suppliers (both tier 1 and 2) on SEDEX by June 2020.
However, the repeated Covid lockdowns and the impact on the industry and our suppliers have
prevented us from making as much progress in this area as we would have liked to, so we did not meet
this deadline, but we will reinvigorate this as soon as resources permit. The extensive use of the
furlough scheme across the industry has, on a very practical level, meant that many key people have
been unavailable to work on this.
Following the engagement process:
all suppliers will be required to update their SEDEX self-assessment questionnaire annually and move
to the new version of the SEDEX SAQ
all sites identified as high risk on SEDEX will be requested to complete an additional ethical audit, if one
has not been completed in the previous 12 months
any non-conformances which have been identified and not addressed within the given time period will
be subject to further evaluation.
In 2021-2022, we will review and amend our Ethical Trading Policy, for all own brand and exclusive
suppliers to become members of SEDEX. Phase 2 of our approach will be to consider our noninventory supply chain and to understand the potential risks
associated with these areas. We aim to
then identify the best ways to collaborate with our non-inventory suppliers to mitigate the risk of
modern slavery, and provide effective remediation strategies where any modern slavery is identified
within their supply chains.
To date, no modern slavery has been identified in our internal operations nor are we aware from our
audit and verification processes of any in our supply chains. We will continue to monitor the
effectiveness of our existing controls internally, and review annually what improvements could be made
to strengthen our auditing and verification procedures.