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About Us
Our Businesses
Investors
Responsibility
Media
ABN delivery at our feed mill in Enstone, UK
AB Agri’s businesses source around 3,000 raw materials from over 1,400 suppliers, including bulk commodity suppliers and ingredient manufacturers. AB Agri’s businesses take steps to introduce due diligence programmes and procedures targeting salient issues within these supply chains. AB Agri remains committed to providing information and training on issues relating to human rights for new employees as part of its induction process.
AB Agri values supply chain diversity and in particular seeks to support small and mid-sized suppliers in upholding its standards. If the business needs to implement new standards or data collection requirements, it aims to work in partnership with its suppliers and engage them as early as possible.
AB Agri’s Responsible Sourcing Policy and its internal Responsible Sourcing Standards apply to all its businesses. The Policy outlines areas of focus, including deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems, human and labour rights, and efficient and more sustainable resource use.
It also explains the roles and responsibilities of the businesses and their employees. The Responsible Sourcing Standards, based on the Group Supplier Code of Conduct and the Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code, describe the sourcing approach and processes required for different sourcing categories.
AB Agri has started to implement the requirements for its raw material sourcing category, and in the longer term, it has committed that all procurement categories will meet defined responsible sourcing standards by 2030. Human and labour rights risks for certain raw materials are identified and monitored using the Verisk Maplecroft global risk analysis tool and the Sedex (Supplier Ethical Data Exchange) online database.
AB Agri also works collaboratively with its suppliers to understand the country of origin of the feed materials purchased as the first stage of risk evaluation. This is now over 95% complete for all raw material suppliers.
Once it has completed the initial Verisk Maplecroft evaluation, AB Agri supports its suppliers in mitigating their risks and complying with its Responsible Sourcing Standards. This process involves completing an online Sedex assessment, which is reviewed by the ethical compliance team and may result in an on-site audit. Throughout this process, the focus is on supporting suppliers to achieve the standards in place and only seeking an alternative supplier if efforts to use its leverage to address relevant issues have failed.
As part of this process, AB Agri has assigned an ethical risk level to all its raw material suppliers, ranging from Level 1 to Level 3. Level 1 is for suppliers with higher potential risks, with a high or no Verisk Maplecroft risk rating and no risk mitigation in place. Level 3 is for suppliers with a low-risk rating in the Verisk Maplecroft evaluation or if the supplier is rated as medium or high risk on Verisk Maplecroft, but AB Agri has started to work with its suppliers on its risk mitigation process.
The aim is to achieve the highest ethical rating (Level 3) for all raw materials suppliers by 2025. While the number of suppliers has grown, progress is steady. At the end of this financial year, the percentage of suppliers in Level 3 had risen to 58%, a 26% increase over last year. The percentage of higher risk suppliers (Level 1) dropped from 54% to 5%. The vast proportion of this reduction was achieved after the AB Agri team in China introduced a further set of evaluation criteria to enable a more detailed assessment of their high-risk suppliers, as well as removing any suppliers that were no longer part of their supply chain.
AB Agri has expanded its focus beyond raw materials to include third-party manufacturing and contracted labour. Over the past year, AB Agri conducted a review of contracted labour used across its manufacturing sites globally, identifying potential risk. It has also assessed all its third-party manufacturers using a set of critical factors to evaluate risk levels. As a result of these evaluations, AB Agri has identified areas requiring risk mitigation actions and plans to audit five third-party manufacturers and assess one contracted labour provider.
Regarding its own operations, all AB Agri manufacturing sites have completed an annual Sedex self-assessment. In 2022, it implemented a three-year rolling internal audit plan to conduct SMETA audits on all its manufacturing sites globally. Seven of these audits were conducted in 2024, with further sites to be scheduled in 2025.
