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 micronutrient 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 names 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
• Introducing a ‘code of conduct for employees’ which reiterates our stance on modern slavery, in addition to setting out various other commitments to our own people, the communities in which we work and to the environment.
• Continuing engagement with our supplier base to ensure awareness of our stance on modern slavery. All new suppliers are required to sign up to our core principles relating to the prevention of modern slavery. We have issued this document to all existing suppliers and have requested that they signed up to our principles on modern slavery.
• 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 with remaining employees, including new starters, being asked to complete their training in the near term. 
• We will be updating and communicating to all employees our ‘employee guidance’ document, particularly designed for those working closely within UK agricultural networks to help support improved awareness of modern slavery risks and how to identify and report concerns.
• Updating of 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. Included within the policy, amongst other things, is an emphasis that each employee has a role and duty to report concerns.
• Ongoing monitoring of potential risks that might appear in our supply chain or with our partners or suppliers.

Other Existing Procedures

As well as the above measures, 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 a 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 235 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.
• Commit to 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, including sourcing external legal advice where appropriate.

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 smallscale businesses in whose sector there may sometimes be a higher risk of unlicensed, seasonal manual
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 risks in our supply chain. If you have any questions regarding this matter, please contact us by emailing us on: info@originukoperations.co.uk