Modern Day Slavery Act Policy Statement

Poly Postal Packaging Limited takes its social responsibilities seriously and conducts its business in accordance with its core values of integrity, respect, commitment and reliability. We recognise that business practices can always be improved and we are therefore committed to improving our practices to ensure that slavery and human trafficking are not present in our business or our supply chains. We will not knowingly support or deal with any business involved in slavery or human trafficking.

OUR BUSINESS

Poly Postal Packaging Limited is an independent manufacturer/supplier of postal and packaging products selling a wide variety of goods to consumers and trade through our website, direct sales and other avenues.  The company's operating site is in Lincoln, UK.

This statement is made on behalf of Poly Postal Packaging Limited but all principles, policies and processes are or will be disseminated to any group companies and suppliers.

OUR SUPPLY CHAINS

We procure the wide range of goods which we sell from manufacturers who are based not only in the UK but in many countries worldwide. This also applies to our own brand products.

Our business also covers a number of activities including advertising and marketing, IT services and broadcasting activities. We outsource the following activities in the UK:

Delivery of products to our customers;

Facilities management, including security, maintenance and cleaning.

We require our suppliers to commit to complying with all applicable laws and regulations. We expect the same level of commitment and high standards in tackling modern slavery from all of our contractors, suppliers and other business partners, and as part of our contracting processes we will review evidence of their commitment to tackling modern slavery, and we expect all our suppliers to hold their suppliers to the same high standards.

RISK ASSESSMENT AND ACTIONS

We have assessed the risk of slavery occurring within our business. Similar to most retailers, the most likely source of slavery occurring in our business is through the product supply chain. We are attempting to mitigate this risk by increasing our knowledge of our suppliers' businesses and adopting a risk-based approach to the assessment of our supply chain, which involves taking geographical, industry and market factors into account in order to identify categories of supply that may present a higher risk of modern slavery being present.

As part of such initiative to identify and mitigate risk we have integrated the following actions into our workstreams:

• Have contractual obligations that reflect modern slavery legislation across our standard new supplier documentation;
• Assess the risk of slavery and trafficking in our supplier sourcing and on-boarding programmes;

We have assessed the product supply chain for goods sold under our own brands as higher risk since the majority of such goods are manufactured in other countries. We have an in house quality team with experience of working with factories to assess and improve adherence to quality and ethical standards and we require such factories to be audited to recognised standards.

OUR BUSINESS

As a responsible employer we adhere to UK employment legislation which we believe offers good protection to our workers. We review our employee policies regularly and these will be amended, where necessary, to provide greater protection against modern slavery in the workplace.

Our employees are subject to and benefit from a range of policies which avert modern slavery (which includes an anti-slavery and trafficking policy, as well as a grievance policy, an equal opportunities policy and anti-bribery and corruption policy). The policies and frameworks that we have in place limit the risk of modern slavery in the workplace and encourage all staff to work ethically.

We also operate a whistleblowing policy to enable our employees to raise any concerns they have, on a confidential basis if they prefer, and for those concerns to be investigated.

MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS

In order to maintain the effectiveness of the steps we are taking to seek to prevent slavery and trafficking taking place in our business and supply chains we will:

• Keep under review our anti-slavery and trafficking policy to ensure effectiveness and relevance;
• Ensure that employees have an awareness of the Modern Slavery Act and slavery and trafficking risks in a format appropriate to their role; and
• Assess and consider the appropriateness of developing further measures and systems including audit of specific suppliers where we assess that there may be a heightened risk of slavery and trafficking within their organisations.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

We understand that slavery and human trafficking are continuing risks and consequently we will:

• Monitor developments in best practice;
• Continue to build awareness within our business;
• Identify any further awareness needs; and
• Develop and implement further processes for identifying, assessing, mitigating and reporting specifically on modern slavery risks in our business and supply chains.

We will conduct an annual review of this Statement.

This Statement is made pursuant to section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes Poly Postal Packaging Limited’s slavery and human trafficking statement for 2021.