As at 30 June 2018, across our supply chains we engaged with more than 750 Coles Brand, fresh produce and meat suppliers, operating at over 2,200 sites and located in more than 40 countries.
Coles supermarkets has an Australian-first Sourcing Policy to provide Australian-grown fresh produce as a first priority. In FY2018, more than 88 per cent of Coles branded food and drink was sourced from Australian suppliers, including 96 per cent of fresh produce and 100 per cent of fresh lamb, pork, chicken, beef, milk and eggs.
We acknowledge the importance of safeguarding human rights through ethical business practices within these supply chains.
Coles takes a risk-based approach to ethical sourcing and human rights due diligence, with a focus on direct suppliers in our Coles Brand, fresh produce and meat supply chains. It is our expectation all suppliers engaged to supply Coles Brand, fresh produce and meat take all reasonable steps to comply with our minimum standards.
Coles was the first major Australian supermarket to adopt the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex), a global ethical supply chain management platform, in 2016. Sedex facilitates risk assessments, and information and social compliance audit sharing across its platform. This maintains visibility and drives consistency across supply chains.
To monitor compliance with the Ethical Sourcing Policy, we require all Coles Brand, fresh produce and meat direct supplier sites to register on Sedex. We determine direct suppliers to mean any site which substantially contributes to the final form of the product and provide examples in section 11 of the Ethical Sourcing Supplier Requirements.
Sedex requires suppliers to complete a comprehensive risk assessment following which they are rated as low, medium or high risk. Medium and high-risk sites are required to be audited by an independent external provider with major non-conformances closed out.
Audit timeframes are specified by Coles and vary depending on peak times for each industry. For example, fresh produce audits would take place during harvest season when workers are on site.
Coles also undertakes direct audits to confirm risk assessments, randomly verify independent audit outcomes and respond to specific issues.
These requirements provide Coles with increased visibility of our suppliers’ employment practices and enable us to proactively monitor human rights risks and compliance with the Coles Ethical Sourcing Policy.
Our Ethical Sourcing Policy also states that suppliers must comply with local and national environmental laws and regulations and use reasonable endeavours to comply with international standards on environmental protection. Australian environmental law covers resources such as land rights and water use.
As of February 2019, 97 per cent of all direct suppliers were registered on Sedex and monitored under our ethical sourcing program. Due to the seasonal nature of our supply chain we are continually working with new suppliers and on-boarding them onto our ethical sourcing program. As our supply base is dynamic, we are unlikely to achieve 100 per cent registration at any one time.
In selected Coles supermarkets we sell our own brand apparel range – Mix. We work with apparel suppliers to build strong relationships throughout the supply chain and monitor performance against our Ethical Sourcing Policy and requirements. The names and locations of the factories producing the Mix clothing range are available here.