Responsible Sourcing
Find out about our approach to responsible sourcing
We source products and commodities from more than 70 countries, so our supply chain is very complex. We introduced our ethical trading programme, including ethical audits of our supply chain, during the 1990s, and we’ve worked hard to make sure supply chain workers enjoy decent working conditions.
Understanding our supply chain and establishing and maintaining clear minimum global supplier standards appropriate to the industries and countries manufacturing and supplying our goods and services
We are committed to achieving greater supply chain transparency and, where appropriate, traceability of our key raw material sources.
We actively map our supply chain including our direct and indirect supply chain relationships. We require all first tier Food and Clothing & Home production sites (which we define as making whole/finished products) to be fully disclosed to us. We use a number of tools to manage this information including the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange (Sedex) and our internal product lifecycle management software.
In April 2016, we published an interactive map featuring the locations of our active first tier clothing and food manufacturers. We added all sites used to make M&S home and beauty products onto the map in April 2017. The map was also extended to disclose sourcing information about some of our key raw materials, including beef, milk, fish, tea and coffee and man-made cellulosic fibres. Details on gender split and existence of a trade union or workers committee are also disclosed. We update this map every six months. Please click 'Find out more' in the footer of the map to understand more about the information disclosed on this map.
All food processing sites (e.g. abattoirs) and farms, growers and fisheries used to supply all the meat, poultry, eggs,, dairy, seafood, fruit, vegetables and salad crops used in M&S fresh or prepared products are approved and known to M&S. Due to the nature of the global trading system it is incredibly difficult to trace batches of commodity raw materials (e.g. cocoa) from farm to factory to retailer. Find out more about our approach to sourcing raw materials, commodities and ingredients.
In 2016, we publicly disclosed where we source our wild-caught fish and shellfish and farmed fish and shellfish together with information about the management of each fisheries and farms, environmental impacts and presence of third party certifications and improvement projects. We also published details on the farms used within our M&S milk pool on our interactive map in September 2017 and our beef supply chain in May 2018. We are in the process of consolidating this information and aim to add details of further primary food raw materials on a continual basis. We will do this in an appropriate way and in due consideration of the human right to privacy on the basis that raw materials are often sourced from locations which are not just businesses they are generally also people's homes.
In the case of Clothing & Home, lower tier sites contracted by our first tier suppliers to make elements of production (e.g. dying, laundering, printing, washing, beading, embroidery) are also required to be fully disclosed to M&S. This information is recorded in our product lifecycle management software. We require wet processing facilities (i.e. dyehouses, printers, laundries, tanneries and finishing facilities) to be disclosed to us on an online system to assess compliance with our Environmental and Chemical Policy (ECP). In 2020, we invited our top 20 fabric suppliers to complete the Sustainable Apparel Coalition's Higg Facility Environmental Module. Find out more about the location of wet processing sites in our supply chain.
In 2017, we committed to become even more transparent about how we operate. We aim to disclose further Food and Clothing & Home supply chain details by 2019 and details of raw materials suppliers by 2022. We also aim to ensure all information can be easily viewed by our customers in store or online worldwide by 2025.
In March 2018, we reinforced the transparency and public disclosure provisions of our Global Sourcing Principles where we made clear that it is a condition of working with M&S that we can publish details of factories used by suppliers. We also reserve the right to publicise any information relating to our products, suppliers and partners on our interactive supply chain map or through other media if we consider it necessary to meet commitments to our stakeholders and comply with human rights, ethical standards or other aspect of sustainability.