Suppliers
Highlights for 2004/05
- Named Organic Supermarket of the Year in the 2004 Soil Association Organic Awards.
- Updated our Code of Conduct for socially responsible sourcing.
- Worked to expand local sourcing and increase the availability of British produce, for example, by helping farmers to extend the onion growing season.
- Received 233 Ethical Trading assessments of supplier sites (2003/04: 539).
- Launched new Fairtrade products including flowers, sugar and coconuts.
- Introduced our first Freedom Food certified line – Lloyd Maunders Devonshire White Chicken, and decided to extend the Freedom Foods certification to all of our own-label corn-fed chicken.
- Increased the proportion of our own-label organic food sourced from the UK, beating our 2004 target of 55%.
- Extended the number of farm suppliers with Biodiversity Action Plans to 868 (2003/04: 694).
- Added hake and pollock to our range of fish certified as sustainably sourced by the Marine Stewardship Council.
- Working with WWF, we agreed targets for 2005/06 on working to eliminate illegally sourced wood-based products.
We have a long tradition of working closely with suppliers to build mutually beneficial relationships. Many of our supplier relationships are long-standing partnerships, sometimes stretching back many decades, which have led to us jointly establishing new products and in some cases new markets.
We want to deliver unparalleled service to our customers, and need to work closely with our suppliers to achieve that. In dealing with suppliers, as in every other aspect of the business, we aim to Keep It Simple. That means we aim for clear accountabilities so that suppliers know exactly what we expect, and we aim to drive out complexity so that we and our suppliers can focus on what matters most – delivering great products at fair prices.
We work with suppliers, using our influence as a major customer, to raise environmental and social standards in our supply chain.
This section explains how we deal with suppliers, the standards we expect, and our approach to specific issues in the supply chain.
