Modern Slavery Statement

Our Organisation, Structure, and Supply Chain

We are a fast-growing start-up, established by two founders who are passionate about doing business the right way. Our business supplies amazing printed food packaging for coffee shops, festivals, events and stadiums – all driven by our desire to do things right for the people that work in our business, our suppliers, our customers and the planet.

Branded Cups Ltd is a private limited company and as a family orientated business, we take our legal, moral, and ethical obligations to our suppliers, customers, and the world seriously. We understand that Modern Slavery is a global issue impacting millions of people and we are committed to playing our part in ensuring our business operations and businesses that supply us are run in an ethical and sustainable manner with the aim of leaving the world in a better place than how we found it.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer where inclusion matters and employment decisions are made without regard to race, colour, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, protected veteran status, or other characteristics protected by law.

In the last financial year, we have worked closely with a small number of suppliers based in the UK who provide us with amazing products. Our supply chain is located throughout Europe.

Accountability for addressing any modern slavery and human trafficking risks within our company and supply chain lies with the Board of Directors.

Policies in Relation to Slavery and Human Trafficking

To ensure our business operations are conducted in an ethical and socially responsible manner, we are introducing the following policies in our organisation to reflect our commitment to the importance of human rights and to mitigate risks of slavery and human trafficking:

• Whistleblowing Policy
• Grievance Policy
• Equality and Diversity Policy

We have no tolerance for abuse of human rights within our business or supply chain and will take any allegations regarding violations of human rights very seriously. With these policies, we hope to build awareness and encourage employees to raise any concerns in good faith in a safe environment.

Due Diligence & Risk Assessment

We are a National Living Wage employer and to mitigate the risk of labour exploitation, we have obtained the services of a labour provider who is licensed by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) licensing scheme. This scheme ensures that businesses who supply workers meet the employment standards that are required by law. We will be recruiting more to the Branded Cups Ltd family as the business grows, whilst ensuring we continuously monitor that our labour provider is licensed to minimise the risk of labour exploitation. Being a small company enables us to have a

 

hands-on approach in our business operations and we have regular informal discussions to gain employee feedback on the working conditions, using the GLAA indicator guidelines to spot any signs of labour exploitation.

Having established our business in 2014, our suppliers have been with us for many years. We nurture long-term, direct relationships with our main suppliers who are made aware of our

organisation’s aspirations to operate in an ethical manner and who share our values. Our positive

engagement with suppliers builds confidence that there is fair treatment for their employees. Modern Slavery is often hidden and we do not have visibility into lower-tier suppliers' practices which is a risk we have identified, however, we are looking to build on our due diligence and risk assessment practices to understand the business operating context. We aim to collaborate with our suppliers and plan to draw on recognised frameworks such as the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) base code to help guide, assess, and mitigate modern slavery risks in line with international standards.

The enablers of senior management commitment, supplier engagement, and collaboration will lay the groundwork for effective due diligence practices.

Training

The Senior Management endeavours to keep abreast of industry best practices and draw on credible resources such as UK Home Office Training resources, Stronger Together, and GLAA materials for awareness training. This information will be trickled down to the staff to ensure everyone in the business is alert to the risks of modern slavery.

Our policies related to modern slavery will be emphasized to the staff so that they can flag up potential issues. We will also create awareness about the Modern Slavery Helpline and other external organisations such as the GLAA, the Police, and Crimestoppers as additional sources of assistance.

Looking Forward

As Modern Slavery can take many disguises, we are committed to continuously improving our approaches to mitigate any risk and outline some of our initiatives for the coming year:

• We aim to continuously improve our policies to ensure modern slavery risks are
• We aim to conduct risk assessments to understand the areas in our business and suppliers that are prone to high risk so as to focus our efforts to initially address these areas.
• We aim to implement due diligence practices with our suppliers by using self-assessment questionnaires which will be guided by the ETI Base code principles and seek to understand the measures taken by our suppliers to ensure modern slavery is not occurring in other tiers.
• We plan on creating a Supplier Code of
• We plan to incorporate relevant modern slavery awareness training in our This statement has been approved by the Board of Directors of Branded Cups Ltd.

 

Quality Policy

Branded Cups Ltd was established in 2014 to provide re-useable, custom printed cups to festivals and events in the UK. Since this time the business has grown and now supplies a range of customised cups and printed food packaging across the EU.

 

Quality is important to our business because we value our customers. We strive to provide our customers with products and services which meet and even exceed their expectations.

 

Should we fall short of this, each and every piece of customer feedback will be reviewed internally and we will do our utmost to put things right with the customer.

 

We are committed to continuous improvement and have established procedures for measuring and improving our performance.

 

We have the following systems and procedures in place to support us in our aim of total customer satisfaction and continuous improvement throughout our business:

 

• Regular gathering and monitoring of customer feedback
• A customer complaints procedure
• Selection and performance monitoring of suppliers
• Training and development for our employees
• Measurable quality objectives which reflect our business aims
• Management reviews of audit results, customer feedback and complaints

 

Our internal procedures are reviewed regularly and are held in a Quality Manual which is made available to all employees.

 

This policy is posted on the Company Notice Board and can also be found in the staff handbook.

 

Although the Managing Director has ultimate responsibility for our products, all employees and our suppliers have a responsibility within their own areas of work to help ensure that a Quality culture is embedded within the whole of the company and the companies of our suppliers.