Bringing amazing and more sustainable tech to our customers isn’t something we do alone. Our partnerships with suppliers make a big difference too.
We collaborate with our manufacturers and suppliers to make sure the products we sell are safe and responsibly sourced. In addition to this, we consider their overall sustainability performance, particularly their energy efficiency and climate change impact.
For customers to enjoy our amazing technology they need peace of mind that we’re sourcing responsibly. With over 6,500 suppliers across the globe, we want to make sure we’re using our size and unique capabilities to do good.
In addition to compliance with all relevant national and international legislation, we have our own Standards for Responsible Sourcing which, together with our Child Labour Remediation and Conflict Minerals policies, set out our expectations for all suppliers, partners and subsequent supply chains. The Standards and policies reflect our commitment to acting with integrity in business relationships.
An Anti-Bribery, Gifts and Hospitality Policy is in place. The procedures in place to oversee the anti-corruption and bribery control environment is reviewed by the Audit Committee on at least an annual basis and most recently in July 2023. The full policy is reviewed by the Board periodically.
Read more about our work on Scope 3 emissions from our supply chain.
We’re committed to eradicating all forms of modern slavery and human trafficking. The fact that modern slavery still exists today is abhorrent and eradication requires collaboration and transparency.
Our Modern Slavery Policy has been issued to all our colleagues, suppliers and partners. It clearly states the actions to take if a case of modern slavery is discovered or suspected. We work with our suppliers to ensure they take appropriate steps and manage risks within their own supply chains.
We continue to expand our efforts to tackle the issue – collating existing actions and working on new initiatives across our business and supply chain to mitigate risk and identify areas that need additional focus.
Our Modern Slavery Statement and Policy has been issued to all our colleagues, suppliers and partners. It clearly states the actions to take if a case of modern slavery is discovered or suspected. We work with our suppliers to ensure they adhere to our Modern Slavery Policy.
You can find more information in our latest Modern Slavery Statement.
At Currys we are proud of the progress we made in 2023/24. Our key achievements included:
- Continuing to invite suppliers to join the EcoVadis platform to enable us to measure their sustainability performance, nearly 60% of Group spend now assessed for sustainability and 50% for carbon maturity. We have also used EcoVadis IQ+ to help monitor supplier risk.
- Through our membership of the Responsible Business Alliance (‘RBA’), we have been exploring the mineral risks associated with our industry, starting with batteries and printed circuit boards, gaining greater insight into the supply chain stages, composition and ESG issues of these technologies.
- Almost 90% of Commercial and Procurement colleagues in the UK & Ireland and Nordics completed our Responsible Sourcing training and we rolled out an enhanced version of the training for colleagues working with own label and licensed brand suppliers and achieved 100% completion. We also Launched a refresh of our modern slavery ‘spot the signs’ training with 600 colleagues working in supply chain and service operations in UK & Ireland completing the training.
- We have worked with Bright Future to provide secure employment and help another person find a way out of modern slavery.
- We have also collaborated with the Slave Free Alliance part of the global anti-slavery charity Hope for Justice, to review our recruitment processes at our Nordic Distribution Centre in Sweden.
- We continue to drive further reductions in working hours for own label and licensed brand suppliers
In 2024/25 we will:
- Publish updated Standards for Responsible Sourcing and review our Modern Slavery, Conflict Minerals and Child Labour Remediation policies.
- Continue our work with EcoVadis and the RBA to develop our approach for mapping and assessing risk in our supply chain for tier two and beyond.
- Work with the Slave Free Alliance to review high risk areas of our store network, including security and cleaning.
- Share learnings with our own label and licensed brand suppliers and develop our understanding of their sourcing practices for high-risk minerals.