Supporting our Food Supply Chain
Find out more about our approach to supplier management
Ensuring that our suppliers have effective management systems in place
We have a zero tolerance approach to forced labour of any kind within our operations and supply chain. We take any incidents very seriously and would work with the relevant authorities and experts to ensure that individuals are protected.
We expect our suppliers to engage our workers in line with legal requirements. They are required to check that all workers have a right to work in a particular country and that they are of legal working age. This applies even if workers are supplied through labour providers, agents or gangmasters. For example, in the UK suppliers are also expected to ensure that labour providers have a valid license from the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA).
We understand that flexible working arrangements are essential in the food industry. They can also be beneficial to workers so they can balance work around other commitments. We do expect however, that our suppliers manage the flexibility of the workforce responsibly.
We are a member of the Leadership Group for Responsible Recruitment and are committed to the Employer Pays Principle.
We are a founding sponsor of the Responsible Recruitment Toolkit, which provides support to our supply chains in ensuring responsible recruitment.
Establishing positive relationships with our suppliers
We are committed to building strong relationships with our suppliers. This is reinforced by the systems and controls we’ve put in place to comply with the Groceries (Supply Chain Practices) Market Investigation Order (the Order) and the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP).
We have reflected the requirements of GSCOP into our Terms of Trade which govern the trading relationship between M&S and our suppliers of food and household products.
We have appointed a Code Compliance Officer who is supported by our in-house legal department. We also provide training on the requirements of GSCOP which includes refresher programmes and training for new starters.
We believe we are in full compliance with the Order and GSCOP.
Each year we actively encourage our suppliers to participate in the independent survey carried out by YouGov on behalf of the Groceries Code Adjudicator.
Each year we also prepare an annual compliance report which we submit to the Competition and Markets Authority and Groceries Code Adjudicator. We include a summary of our compliance report in our Annual Report.
GSCOP Contacts
If you are an M&S supplier and have a GSCOP related query, please contact our Code Compliance Officer Max.Gillibrand@Marks-and-Spencer.com
If you are an M&S supplier and have an invoice or payment related query please contact our Vendor Support helpdesk Vendor.SupportFoods@Marks-and-Spencer.com
List of our Senior Buyers
If you are an M&S supplier and have a GSCOP query related to the products that you supply, please contact the relevant Senior Buyer in the first instance:
- Lisa.Raschia@marks-and-spencer.com : Fruit, Salads, Vegetables, Flowers/Plants, Frozen
- Katharine.Haenelt@marks-and-spencer.com : Poultry, Meat, Fish, Dairy, Delicatessen, Bakery, In Store Bakery
- David.Stokes@marks-and-spencer.com : Meals, Desserts, Food on the Move
- Caroline.Cromar@marks-and-spencer.com : Hospitality
- Lizzy.Massey@marks-and-spencer.com : Groceries, Savouries, Biscuits & Celebration, Homecare, Soft Drinks, Juice
- Andrew.x.Shaw@marks-and-spencer.com : Beers, Wines, Spirits
- Rebecca.Overton@marks-and-spencer.com : M&S own label Beauty
- Rebecca.Cullen@marks-and-spencer.com : Branded Beauty
The Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA)
Contact details for the GCA and more information can be found on the GCA website Groceries Code Adjudicator
Marks and Spencer Food Terms of Trade
Marks and Spencer trade with our suppliers on our standard Terms of Trade/Supply Agreement (for all suppliers engaged before March 2021)
Marks and Spencer trade with our suppliers on our standard Terms of Trade/Supply Agreement (for all suppliers engaged from March 2021)
Within our supply chain we ensure all workers are paid at least the minimum wage. Overtime should always be compensated at a premium rate, and where piece work is used, suppliers must be able to demonstrate that the minimum wage is always met, that there is a fair test, and that rates are flexed according to conditions.
We continue to assess our food supply base to understand where the gaps between minimum wages and poverty benchmarks are highest. Some of the greatest gaps we have found are within sub-Saharan Africa, as a result of this we have undertaken two collaborative projects to start tackling this issue.
- Kenyan green beans project – a 3 year Comic Relief funded project where we worked with Traidcraft and our supplier Flamingo looking at our green bean smallholder supply chain in Kenya. The project looked at how the value chain can work more effectively to provide a more stable income for smallholders
- Malawi 2020 – we joined this tea revitalisation project in June 2015 in collaboration with the Ethical Tea Partnership and IDH. The project was set up following concerns that wages paid to tea workers in Malawi do not meet international poverty benchmarks.
Checking that our food safety and integrity standards are met
- Food Safety Audits are unannounced. Compliance is checked against our Food Safety Manufacturing Standard and Guidance (e.g. HACCP, cleaning, pest control, allergens, fabrication), which details all requirements as relevant to certain products or facilities (e.g. cooked meats and poultry, milk production standards, etc).
- Integrity Audits are unannounced and we expect to be on the factory floor or in the office working within 15 minutes of arriving on site. Compliance is checked against a number of our key Codes of Practice (e.g. Segregation, Integrity, Quality, Ethical Trade, and our non-GM policy, etc)
Outstanding | Exceeds M&S requirements |
Good | Meets M&S requirements |
Needs Improvement | Improvement needed to meet all M&S requirements |
Unacceptable | Failing to meet M&S requirements |
Suppliers are risk assessed, based on their location and the nature of their supply chain, for audit requirements. The Sedex Radar Agricultural Country risk assessment is used to determine country risk. Sites that require an ethical audit must do so on a 2 year cycle. All audits must be uploaded onto the Sedex Platform, and must be a semi-announced Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA).
Grading | Minor | Major | Critical |
Red | 10+ | 10+ | 1 or more |
Bronze | 10+ | 4-9 | 0 |
Silver | 4-9 | 1-3 | 0 |
Gold | 0-3 | 0 | 0 |
Continent | Suppliers sites | Audited Supplier sites | Workers at supplier sites | Audited Workers | Audits | Improvement Required | Improvement Required per audit |
Africa | 65 | 16 | 41,340 | 17,621 | 16 | 83 | 5.19 |
Asia | 56 | 22 | 15,654 | 7,895 | 23 | 115 | 5.00 |
Europe | 878 | 143 | 256,185 | 37,939 | 146 | 440 | 3.01 |
North America | 8 | 0 | 1,474 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 |
Oceania | 16 | 0 | 2,756 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 |
South America | 43 | 9 | 31,730 | 14,034 | 9 | 44 | 4.89 |
Grand Total | 1,066 | 190 | 349,139 | 77,489 | 194 | 682 | 3.52 |
** M&S Salient Human Rights Issue – find out more about our approach to respecting human rights.
Building capability within our supply chain
We’re committed to working with our suppliers to help them develop the necessary skills and competencies to meet our requirements by offering a range of training and development opportunities.
Our training programmes cover a range of topics including integrity, pest control, allergen awareness, listeria investigation, and foreign body prevention. They are delivered through a variety of formats including e-learning, presentations, workshops, practical assessments, webinars or case studies.
We have designed training programmes to educate suppliers about local laws, their rights at work, and our Global Sourcing Principles.
We’ve launched a series of initiatives in partnership with educational colleges to provide the core skills needed to ensure the food industry’s future success. For example, we support degree students at Harper Adams University College and in 2013 we developed a unique, The M&S Agricultural Leadership Programme, in association with Cranfield University School of Management. Find out more about how we support educational programmes and British farming.
We actively work with our suppliers on supporting workers in our supply chain on programmes including leadership skills, financial literacy and health. We continue to develop our supplier scorecard with an intention to launch in 2021, covering a range of important issues. To ensure a smooth transition to a new programme, in 2020/21 we've focused on the conclusion of our previous supplier programme and launched three toolkits for suppliers on the issues of Ethical Trade, Environmental Sustainability and Lean Manufacturing.
Working with our suppliers we're focusing on a smaller number of salient KPIs and outcomes to allow focus and create real change. This programme has undergone a series of tests at key suppliers and we plan to launch the new way of working as part of our plans for 2021/22. Alongside this, we are working with WWF and UK retailers to agree uniform KPIs on GHG emissions reporting.
We also worked with Emerging Leaders to provide leadership training to around 50,000 supply chain workers in Kenya, east Africa and South Africa, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The training takes participates on an incredible journey to a new mind-set and empowers them to take others on the same journey as leaders in their communities. Many tell us that the programme has led to improved productivity, better retention of high quality, motivated employees and less dependency on casual labour.
We have an aspiration to be a leading major retailer on sustainability, but we can only achieve this if we spark systemic, innovative change within our supply base. We appreciate that it can be challenging for our suppliers to meet our requirements. We also know that it can be difficult for many suppliers to see what this brings in terms of direct benefits to them. We need to understand and be sensitive to these issues. Capacity building is absolutely essential to making this happen.
Whilst ongoing monitoring of compliance is of course necessary and useful, it is not the be all and end all. For instance, solely focusing on individual non-compliances can result in underlying issues being missed. In addition, this approach may not identify emerging issues or support the development of a continuous improvement culture within our supply base.
We therefore complement our existing activities by going ‘beyond compliance’ and defining areas of continuous improvement with our suppliers. We do this by providing a range of capacity building tools and incentives to align our respective goals and objectives. This includes capacity in terms of resources, technical skills, knowledge, as well as research and development.
Key documents