Modern Slavery Statement 2024

Our due diligence processes regarding slavery and human trafficking in its business and supply chains

To ensure adherence to this requirement, FKA has the following processes in place:

• All FKA staff members who visit our suppliers, conduct UK recruitment or appoint contractors are trained to determine signs of forced labour. We use training modules supplied by the Safety Media, Astute, Costco and SEDEX platforms. In 2025, this training will be rolled out across all regions.
• Prior to approval of a new supplier, all factories are audited by FKA employees and audited at least every 2 years afterwards.
• Other Chinese FKA employees such as expeditors and pre-shipment inspectors who regularly visit the factories are required to look for signs of any forced labour and must report any concerns.
• UK and USA-based FKA employees who visit the factories are required to look for signs of any forced labour and must report any concerns. These include the senior management, quality & compliance, operations & marketing teams. A number of site visits took place in 2024. FKA has continued to supplement the onsite visits by regional employees through remote sessions with our suppliers. These will continue into the next reporting period. These sessions include feedback on our annual surveys covering Forced Labour, Child Labour, Conflict Minerals and their SEDEX Risk Score.
• In 2022, each supplier confirmed they comply with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Each supplier will be required to reconfirm this in 2025.
• Each year, FKA surveys its Asia-based suppliers regarding policies on Forced Labour, Child Labour and Conflict Minerals along with other surveys on environmental issues. These surveys contain links to subject matter related to the survey and ask questions on their monitoring of second and third tier suppliers.
• The regional Employee Handbooks detail our whistleblowing policies.
• If FKA detected the use of Forced Labour in any of its suppliers, FKA would:
  • cease all production immediately
  • work with the factory on a corrective action plan (if a plan could not be agreed upon, FKA would remove the supplier from its Approved Supplier List)
  • notify its Trade Associations
  • notify the local authorities and provide any evidence obtained by FKA
• Our factories are used by other leading global manufacturers and retailers who also conduct similar audits to FKA.
• FKA supplies leading retailers which require many of our factories to be independently audited to SMETA, BSCI and RBA standards by reputable auditors (such as Intertek, BV, TUV, SGS and UL). In 2015, 66% of FKA’s UK purchased volume came from these audited suppliers. This amounted to 78% of purchased volume, down in this period from 89% in the previous period and reflects a larger number of new suppliers appointed in 2024. Most of these suppliers will be audited in 2025.
• FKA offices do not keep records of employees who are members of a trade union or similar organisation. All FKA employees, service providers and factories have the right to freedom of association and are allowed to join a trade union or similar organisation.
• To date, no evidence of Modern Slavery has been detected by FKA during our own or third-party audits.

In this year’s survey of our suppliers, FKA found that:

• 81% of suppliers (by PO value) are aware of the need to monitor the entire supply chain. This is lower than last year (96%), but accounts for the additional suppliers who had not previously supplied FKA. 89% of these suppliers, the same percentage as last period, had systems such as audits, third party audits and site visits in place to back up these claims.
• 95% of suppliers (by PO value), up from 93% in the previous period, are aware of the need to look for signs of Child Labour within the supply chain, while the remaining are planning to do so in 2025.
• 99.5% of the suppliers, by PO value, reported that sourcing was from approved smelter programs, up from 53% in the previous period.

Last year, we asked our top suppliers (80% of PO value) extra questions around working practices. This period we asked these questions of all suppliers. This showed that:

• Employees are included in reviews of health and safety risk assessments
• 6 suppliers reported some employees paid a recruitment fee and these will be reviewed during the period. A review last year found that suppliers had misreported employee paid recruitment fees.
• Some employers had paid a recruitment fee to secure an employee
• Almost all second-tier suppliers of our Chinese suppliers were in PR China

In the previous period, we followed up with EMEA suppliers on the survey and SEDEX scores as anticipated. The Sustainability Steering Committee (made up of senior manager and colleagues from each region where FKA operates) and a Green Management Team continue to meet.