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 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 ensuring that it is compliant with the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“MSA”) and will not accept non-compliance with the MSA within its own 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:

• Rollout of a Group Supplier Code of Conduct during 2023, which requires our suppliers to acknowledge accept and adhere to. The Supplier Code of Conduct covers a number of areas consistent with the general context of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, but with specific focus on: people & labour; business ethics & compliance; and health, safety and the environment.
• 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 and communicating to all employees a Conduct Charter which is complementary to our existing Code of Conduct for employees and recurrent training and guidance to help identify and report human rights abuses/slavery. Collectively these policies and guides reiterate our commitments to our own people, the communities in which we work and to the environment as well as making clear our commitment to human rights abuses/slavery prevention.
• Continuing our 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.
• 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 circa 230 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 to do so.
• Annual communication to all employees reiterating the need for vigilance with respect to modern slavery, alongside sharing links to current guidance and policy. Reminders and links to eLearning training (to be completed by all new starters and every two years for existing employees) are also shared as part of the annual communication.

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, 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: MSA@originukoperations.co.uk