As a business, we do not own or directly operate factories, however we are committed to working with our Supply Chain Partners, and we further build and improve our Social and Ethical Compliance and Education Programs whilst expanding and consolidating our sourcing footprint. We can report that the factories listed as follows represent our core long-term partnerships and as our business moves forward any changes to this list will be updated at regular intervals including the recent addition of a small number of Supply Chain Partners in Bangladesh and India.
The ongoing partnership between our Supply Chain Partners, ourselves, and SEDEX has strengthened our knowledge and abilities to ensure that the workers in these factories have benefits including Acceptable working conditions, Fair and Equal treatment and the rights set out in the ETI Base Code which has been previously communicated in this website as adherence to the ETI Base Code contributes to workers’ personal and family life wellbeing.
By combining our SMETA Audit Programs with factory training and development programs driven by our Compliance teams, and the use of SEDEX tools such as Radar and Analytics we can identify areas of High risk together with any Salient Risks which allows us to work with our Partners to replace and mitigate these.
The factories listed produce apparel and associated products for our Brand and National retail customers including New Zealand and our International customers.
A commitment to payment of a Living Wage to workers by factories is a mandatory requirement as set out in our ETI agreement with each factory and each formal audit includes verification that auditors have found payments of wage levels are in line with the nationally set minimum wage across all regions that they operate in within China, Bangladesh and India. We continue to work with our audit service providers to make ongoing improvements to their audit methodologies to ensure transparency that all workers across our Supply Chain are paid Living Wage levels as calculated by ANKER Methodology (or similarly accepted methodology) by the end of 2025.
Currently our sourcing base is mainly within China with some recent additions in Bangladesh and India where the use of forced or prison labour is prohibited and is monitored by our ongoing audit and factory inspection programs.
The most prevalent non-conformance findings reported in the above audits are Excessive Overtime hours worked and variations in payments of workers social insurances by factories and we have ongoing projects operating that are focused on gaining responsible improvements across these including closing of non-conformances within timelines set out in each audit.
In China most of our Supply Chain workers are female in the 40 years plus age group, where in Bangladesh and India both male and female workers are generally equally represented, and age grouping is below that found in China.
Worker elected committees or their equivalent representatives operate in the factories, and we are progressing with joint projects to share worker grievance reports and ongoing improvement programs with them and workers.
Our Supply Chain factories operate worker training programs covering Rights, Health and Safety, and legally mandated working conditions including freedom of association and movement, and the rights to report abuse and grievances within the workplace.
All factories are audited on an annual basis or when identified risks to workers require immediate audit reviews and actions. Audits follow strict guidelines endorsed by the ETI and are carried out by internationally recognized organizations such as SGS and Intertek, where our preferred audit program is SMETA 4 Pillar covering workers’ rights, health and safety, and environmental performances. Audit non-conformances are supported by corrective action plans and our Supply Chain Partner factories work with our local based and Sydney teams to remedy non-compliances within set timelines.