Corporate Social Responsibility

We’ll only work with companies who share our strong beliefs in having a safe and dignified workplace. That means we personally travel across the world from our headquarters in Nottingham to inspect any company we work with to ensure they’re meeting our numerous social, ethical and environmental standards. We do this every year. Here’s what’s written into our contracts:

Child Labour
A fundamental part of our agreement with any country is that child labour is not acceptable. We won’t work with any organisations.

Forced and Compulsory labour
We refuse to accept any forced labour, in whatever form that takes. Workers don’t pay any form of deposit and or documentation to attain the right to work.

Health and Safety
Basic necessities such as clean toilets and fresh drinking water must be provided in all cases as staff require. Where food is not provided by the company, then a safe storage for food must be provided. Safety training is provided where appropriate and there’s always a designated manager responsible for the enforcement of health and safety.

Freedom of Association plus right to collective bargaining
Factory employees have the right to join a trade union, or even the right to form one. And any worker representative should never be discriminated against.

Discrimination
We demand that there is no discrimination whatsoever based on a person’s background, creed, colour sexual orientation, gender, union membership or political membership.

Disciplinary Practices
Another key guarantee is for no physical or psychological abuse of employees, including sexual harassment, verbal or any other form of intimidation.

Working Hours
Any companies we work with must adhere to national labour laws in terms of working hours. Employees shouldn’t work in excess of 48 hours per week regularly. They must also get at least 1 day off for every 7-day time period. Any overtime is required to be voluntary.

Remuneration
We require that our partners’ obligation to employees under labour or social security laws are adhered to, not sub contracted out. Where an opportunity to develop an apprenticeship scheme has been identified, we look for real intent to impart skills and training. All employees must be provided with and fully understand their terms of employment especially.

Environmental Impact

The planet is not just a place that deserves protecting for future generations, but the world of sailing and the maritime environment – our coasts and our seas - depends on that protection. So we seek out suppliers who take positive action to minimise environmental impact. In practice that means:

• Transparency throughout the supply chain. Information about the origin of our materials helps us control quality and assess environmental and social impact.
• We require our suppliers to openly provide details of all sub-component products, and map their own supply chains. For every single one of our fabrics or trims, we require a profile sheet and all relevant third-party certificates and CSR policies.
• We request that all our suppliers provide regular reports of their energy saving initiatives.
• It’s essential that all our suppliers who use water in the production of materials ensures the water is fully recycled, and any water returned to the river system does so having been treated to ensure it’s safe to drink.
• All our suppliers use recycled packaging and any waste is also recycled. We ask that all suppliers certificate that the packaging they use is recycled.
• Sourcing of Down must be through a certified supplier that can ensure the product comes from an ethically sourced farm. Again, certification from the supplier is required.
• Finally, at our own head office, we work hard to reduce our own environmental footprint through recycling, minimising packaging, consolidating shipments to reduce emissions, and reducing energy consumption.