Our business

As a leading manufacturer and distributor of Fertilisers to Agriculture and Amenity sectors throughout Great Britain, we produce a comprehensive range of NPK, prescription blends, straights and micro-nutrient products. In addition to commodity Fertilisers, the company is committed to developing innovative and technologically enhanced crop nutrition products and services with the objective of improving crop yields, crop quality and farmer returns. Origin Fertilisers and PB Kent are trading name of Origin UK Operations Limited.

Our ethical standards

Origin UK Operations Limited (trading as Origin Fertilisers and PB Kent) is committed to conducting itself with the highest ethical and legal standards, ensuring that the operations within the business and its supply chain meet those standards at all times.

Origin is committed to ensure that it is compliant with the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“MSA”) and will not accept non-compliance with the MSA within its operations or those of partners or suppliers. We are aware that human traffickers and illegal/unlicensed gang-masters target a range of industries including those involved in the agricultural sector. It remains important that we maintain our vigilance and continually improve our controls and procedures.

Continuous improvement

We recognise that risk assessment, management oversight and continuous improvement are important, and we closely monitor UK government guidance, updates and requirements. Origin continues to review and improve upon its actions and due diligence measures, including but not limited to the following:

• Operation of MSA Steering group comprised of senior HR, Operations and Finance representatives to discuss, implement and develop MSA controls and procedures and review progress 
• Continuing our engagement with our supplier base to ensure awareness of our stance on modern slavery. In the last year, all new suppliers have been required to sign up to our core principles on modern slavery. We have issued this document to all existing suppliers, for which many have acknowledged receipt of, signed up and sent back to us.
• Requirement for new and existing employees to undertake our e-learning training on modern slavery to improve general awareness and understanding of the risks around it. To that end, the vast majority of our employees have already completed the training and we have set further targets over the coming year. Additionally, we are currently designing more specific educational content for key roles who work closely within agricultural networks, to help support improved awareness of modern slavery risks and how to identify and report concerns
• Implementing our internal modern slavery policy, which sets out Origin’s response to the MSA, including details of current procedures that we have put in place.
• Ongoing monitoring of potential risks that might appear in our supply chain or with our partners or suppliers.

The COVID-19 pandemic

We are acutely aware that the COVID-19 pandemic brought increased risk to Modern Slavery in some industries and some organisations within the Agricultural sector. We understand that the situation is everchanging and that there could still be further potential impacts on the food sector supply chain. We can confirm that to date, the following information remain the case for our Company:

• – Origin UK Operation’s own recruitment and staffing demand has been stable throughout the pandemic.
• Origin UK Operations supported its own employees by being more flexible regarding working hours, working practices, working from home and offering wellbeing advice.
• All sites and meetings continue to be risk-assessed as required with regular briefings to all employees on COVID-19 controls and measures in place, with the provision of PPE to protect against COVID-19 risks in workplaces.
• There has been no indications or evidence to suggest that our supply chain has suffered from an increased risk of modern slavery.
• Payment of suppliers has not suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic with our usual supplier invoices being paid on time and in full.
• We’ve continued to work with our new and existing suppliers to confirm they understand and accept Origin’s position on modern slavery and sign up to our core principles on modern slavery. We track responses from suppliers [as one key metric] to assist in determining the effectiveness of our efforts to ensure our supply chain is free from modern slavery and human trafficking.

Other existing procedures

As well as the above, we will also continue to take the following steps to ensure that we further combat slavery and human trafficking:

• Provide an opportunity for all employees to identify risks anonymously through its (externally provided) whistleblowing process, which is detailed on the company intranet, notice boards on all sites and communicated in our Modern Slavery policy.
• Continue our internal ‘risk checks’ to ensure that any permanent or seasonal employment (within our 270 workforce, based at various sites within the UK including our production facilities) does not contravene our own ethical standards or any legislation or government guidance.
• Promptly answer questions posed by our customers in respect of the MSA who wish to know more about our operations and / or our supply chain.
• Continue to monitor and review our MSA processes, ensuring that we are also keeping up to date with proposed government amendments to legislation.

Our supply chain

We are a manufacturer and distributor and our supply chain is global in its reach. We source from manufacturers directly or through intermediaries. Many of our suppliers are large in scale with deemed low-risk of non-compliance to the MSA. However, we remain vigilant to all risks, particularly in small-scale businesses in whose sector there may sometimes be a higher risk of unlicensed manual, seasonal labour.
Origin UK Operations Limited is committed to ensuring our supply chain is free from human rights abuses and modern slavery. We actively welcome comments and suggestions from anyone within our supply chain about how we can improve our operations or further reduce any risks in our supply chain. If you have any questions regarding this issue please contact us by emailing us on:

info@originukoperations.co.u