Our vision

To ensure that our employees clearly understand what is expected of them in conducting business ethically, with a common set of values. We expect our business partners to act in a manner that aligns with our approach, values and behaviours, as set out in our Code of Conduct.

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Our approach

We are committed to acting responsibly and conducting our business operations with integrity. Our values and purpose drive our business decisions and Code of Conduct, and all our decisions are made with a focus on the impact they may have on our five main stakeholder groups. The Board considers that our people and operations meet the highest standards of business conduct.

We constantly improve our practices and processes to ensure safe and responsible operations and an ethical supply chain.

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Labour and human rights

We fully support the principles set out in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our policies and procedures reflect the principles contained within the Declaration.

We support the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and have adopted a slavery and human trafficking statement, setting out our processes to ensure that this issue is not in existence in our operations or supply chain.

Download Modern Slavery Statement

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Supply chain

We expect our business partners to have similar values to our own to ensure that slavery and human trafficking is not something we are associated with.

Through screening our supply chain using third party software and physically inspecting our supply chain, we are confident that this is not an issue within our operations. Our internal audit function also checks the integrity of the supply chain as part of its internal audit programme. We train our employees on this issue through a combination of web-based training modules and also through our Code of Conduct.

We are currently upgrading our supply chain analysis to reduce our impact and risk by conducting a Group-wide standard review. This will ensure our suppliers operate in terms broadly similar to our policies and procedures and verify that all raw materials are sourced ethically and sustainably. We expect to complete this process by the middle of 2022 and have recently formalised our Responsible Sourcing Policy and recommunicated this to suppliers.

Download Responsible Sourcing Policy

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Case study: Supply chain management during the pandemic

In order to preserve the supply of our products to end customers and ensure that long-term prospects for the business were not harmed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board and senior leadership team adapted to the circumstances with more frequent Board meetings, reforecasts to reflect the reality and anticipated impact of the pandemic, and rigorous control of the cost base.

The integrity of the supply chain was a key consideration among the measures actioned to protect the business, with robustness of supply an issue that was actively managed. Despite some challenges, we ensured the integrity and robustness of our supply chain throughout the pandemic. This demonstrated the effectiveness of our screening of reputational and financial risks for all major third parties that we do business with.

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